MugaSofer comments on Arguments Against Speciesism - LessWrong

28 Post author: Lukas_Gloor 28 July 2013 06:24PM

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Comment author: MugaSofer 04 August 2013 03:38:42PM *  -1 points [-]

And a smart teenager is likely to think 'I am smart enough and competent enough at making decisions to vote. But I know what a lot of other people my age are like, and they're certainly not like that.

You're implying there's supposed to be an age at which this stops being true?

Comment author: Jiro 05 August 2013 04:03:38AM 2 points [-]

It's not logically consistent to believe that for all ages X people of age X are worse voters than average. There must be at least one age where the people of that age are better than average--it's a logical necessity, because of how averages work!

I think you are confusing "most other voters my age are stupid" (which people can and do say at any age) and "most other voters in my group are particularly stupid, compared to the average voter".

Comment author: MugaSofer 06 August 2013 01:46:27PM *  -1 points [-]

Actually, I was trying to make a joke, on the basis that the quoted section seems to imply the former.

Clearly I failed.

As an aside, have you considered applying that argument to other groups that were once disenfranchised? I'm not going to say it's wrong, but that particular exercise certainly produces a worrying number of parrallels (similar to applying spaciest arguments to racist ones, as per the parent article.)

Comment author: Jiro 06 August 2013 03:34:00PM 0 points [-]

have you considered applying that argument to other groups that were once disenfranchised?

The argument is that a smart person in such a group would agree that the rest of them are too stupid to vote. It doesn't apply to other disenfranchised groups until they actually would believe this too. I doubt that the other groups you are referring to would believe this.

Comment author: MugaSofer 18 August 2013 10:43:23PM -1 points [-]

I was thinking of women. Y'know, back in Ye Olden Days.

In general, I think, there is a tendency not to disenfranchise groups even if they are in some sense "below average", because, y'know, representation be good. Again, imagine the racist pointing out that n*s have, on average, less education than we do. Or maybe your model of Terrible People is less convincing than mine?

*he's a racist, he aint talking to Them, he's talking to Us White Guys.