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Lumifer comments on Open Thread, Apr. 13 - Apr. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Gondolinian 13 April 2015 12:19AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 19 April 2015 02:13:20AM 0 points [-]

do you too have a similar empathy deficiency problem I am struggling with?

Hard to say -- I do not struggle with such a problem and in my experience people who proclaim that I should have more empathy towards X just want my money.

but can't we give some empathic understanding how A feels coerced, forced, unfree, due to the lack of money, to follow his impulse and B, C, D not?

Some. Very very small empathetic understanding. Certainly not enough to base economic systems of societies on.

But if you think you should feel so much empathy for the poor bloke who can't be a violinist, let me ask you something. Have you ever been to a very poor third world country? Say, India, or something in Tropical Africa. I recommend you go, and not in a tour bus either. I suspect this will recalibrate your empathy a lot.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 April 2015 12:06:27PM *  -2 points [-]

No, I was never outside Europe, don't really like to travel long distances, I am more familiar with the Eastern European style of poverty and yes, most of what empathy I am capable of having goes to people outside the first world, inside the first world it seems more doable to compromise personal goals with the need to make a living.

My point is simply libertarian capitalism cannot really claim to maximize personal freedom, of course, we could say that it does optimize the combined goal of personal freedom and coming up with an economic system that can survive more than 50 years, economists understand it, I am just saying some understanding should be given to non-economists who look for alternatives where most people are not stuck in having to make a living doing things they don't like. That libertarian capitlaism should not be defined as an individualist or freedom based system, but more like a stability based system, we could easily imagine far more freedom based or far more individualist systems (say based on basic income where most people are not expected to get a job) but they would not last for more than 2 generations, so it would be more proper to call it stability based, not individuality based, that is only my point, not that it is bad or that there are currently better alternatives, but merely that its virtue is its stability, not its individuality nor its freedom.