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ThisSpaceAvailable comments on Be comfortable with hypocrisy - Less Wrong Discussion

32 Post author: The_Duck 08 April 2014 10:03AM

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Comment author: ThisSpaceAvailable 11 April 2014 12:33:48AM 4 points [-]

This is based on "hypocrisy" referring to not living up to one's values, but I think that there is another sense of "hypocrisy" that refers to not merely acting contrary to one's stated values, but asserting rights inconsistent with one's stated values. Take, for instance, members of the KKK. They surely considered themselves to have a right to not be murdered, yet they asserted a right to murder others. Avoiding this sort of hypocrisy is a fundamental principle of morality: when a kid hits another kid, an adult will often ask something like "How would you feel if he did that to you?" If you're not willing to give others the same rights as you give yourself, that's a good clue that either you are assigning more rights to yourself then you are entitled, or you're assigning less rights to others, or both.