MarkusRamikin comments on Thoughts on moral intuitions - LessWrong

39 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 30 June 2012 06:01AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 01 July 2012 08:07:07PM *  9 points [-]

I think this would be a genuine cause for concern, not because I don't think that people should be able to enter whatever relationships please them in principle, but because in practice I'm concerned about people being coerced into signing contracts harmful to themselves. Not sure where I'd draw the line exactly; this is probably a Hard Problem.

Well, there you go. Any restriction on freedom of contract can be rationalized as preventing something "harmful," one way or another.

And it's not a hard problem at all. It is in fact very simple: when people like something for ideological reasons, they will use the libertarian argument to support its legality, and when they dislike something ideologically, they will invent rationalizations for why the libertarian argument doesn't apply in this particular case. The only exceptions are actual libertarians, for whom the libertarian argument itself carries ideological weight, but they are an insignificant fringe minority. For everyone else, the libertarian argument is just a useful rhetorical tool to be employed and recognized only when it produces favorable conclusions.

In particular, when it comes to marriage, outside of the aforementioned libertarian fringe, there is a total and unanimous agreement that marriage is not a contract whose terms can be set freely, but rather an institution that is entered voluntarily, but whose terms are dictated (and can be changed at any subsequent time) by the state. (Even the prenuptial agreements allow only very limited and uncertain flexibility.) Therefore, when I hear a libertarian argument applied to marriage, I conclude that there are only two possibilities:

  1. The speaker is an honest libertarian. However, this means either that he doesn't realize how wildly radical the implications of the libertarian position are, or that he actually supports these wild radical implications. (Suppose for example that a couple voluntarily sign a marriage contract stipulating death penalty, or even just flogging, for adultery. How can one oppose the enforcement of this contract without renouncing the libertarian principle?)

  2. The speaker has an ideological vision of what the society should look like, and in particular, what the government-dictated universal terms of marriage should be (both with regards to the institution of marriage itself and its tremendous implications on all the other social institutions). He uses the libertarian argument because its implications happen to coincide with his ideological position in this particular situation, but he would never accept a libertarian argument in any other situation in which it would imply something disfavored by his ideology.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 01 July 2012 09:09:45PM *  6 points [-]

And it's not a hard problem at all. It is in fact very simple: when people like something for ideological reasons, they will use the libertarian argument to support its legality, and when they dislike something ideologically, they will invent rationalizations for why the libertarian argument doesn't apply in this particular case.

I don't think you're solving the same problem that I am.

You seem to think (and based on your upvotes, people seem to agree for some reason) that a cynical summary of the ideological landscape is somehow an answer to anything. And sure, that is not a hard problem. I'm more interested in actual solutions and their consequences than in why people argue for them: what happens if we increase freedom thus and thus, how will this affect society and what harm will come from it as side effects?

Also I find it grating when everything gets summed up as ideology and politics. Do people only ever claim to want more freedom because they happen to be pushing some particular ideological agenda? I don't know, but personally I dislike limitations for which there isn't a good enough reason. I first started thinking about this when I was considering getting married, not when I was thinking about politics.

Likewise, are all objections to increase in freedom rationalisations? Again, I find this offensive cynicism. Maybe someone's done the math or seen how it works in another country, and sees real negative consequences?

Comment author: Vladimir_M 02 July 2012 02:55:26AM *  1 point [-]

I'm more interested in actual solutions and their consequences than in why people argue for them: what happens if we increase freedom thus and thus, how will this affect society and what harm will come from it as side effects?

If I am reading you correctly, you now seem to be saying something very different from your original comment that prompted this exchange. Yes, I certainly agree that it's a fascinating intellectual exercise to speculate on what would happen if various restrictions on freedom of contract were relaxed, in this context as well as others. However, your original comment went far beyond that -- it expressed enthusiastic support for a sweeping and blanket elimination of such restrictions, going so far as to equate such support with "sanity." Yet as I pointed out, such sweeping relaxation would, in turn, have straightforward implications that the entire mainstream public opinion nowadays would consider insane -- which position may be wrong, to be sure, but that would still make it odd to oppose it as if you were asserting something obvious and uncontroversial. I thought it would be interesting to seek some clarification on this point.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 02 July 2012 07:15:10AM *  1 point [-]

I clarified these things in my first response to you. I conceded that I don't support that statement without qualification, and clarified what exactly I found so sane about it despite that.