In response to comment by Roxton on The Fallacy of Gray
Comment author: Larks 29 May 2013 05:27:48PM 1 point [-]

No, many people think coercion qua coercion is wrong - for example, philosophers of a Kantian bent, which is very common in political philosophy.

In response to comment by Larks on The Fallacy of Gray
Comment author: Roxton 29 May 2013 05:57:58PM *  0 points [-]

Point taken, but I would advance the view that the popularity of such a categorical point stems from the fallacy. It seems to be the backbone that makes deontological ethics intuitive.

In any event, it's still clearly an instance of begging the question.

But my goal was to cast a shadow on the off-topic point, not to derail the thread.

In response to The Fallacy of Gray
Comment author: Dan_Burfoot 07 January 2008 09:56:30AM 11 points [-]

That which I cannot eliminate may be well worth reducing.

I wish this basically obvious point was more widely appreciated. I've participated in dozens of conversations which go like this:

Me: "Government is based on the principle of coercive violence. Coercive violence is bad. Therefore government is bad." Person: "Yeah, but we can't get rid of government, because we need it for roads, police, etc." Me: " $%&*@#!! Of course we can't get rid of it entirely, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth reducing!"

Great post. I encourage you to expand on the idea of the Quantitative Way as applied to areas such as self improvement and everyday life.

Comment author: Roxton 29 May 2013 03:26:54PM 3 points [-]

Doesn't "coercive violence is bad" beg the question in a way that would only be deemed natural if one were implicitly invoking the noncentral fallacy?

Comment author: Yvain 11 September 2012 07:40:25PM *  3 points [-]

What's the alternative to rationally debating ideas that violate our moral sensibilities, assuming some people hold them?

Is it to declare with 100% certainty that any idea that violates our moral sensibilities is false? Is it to say that maybe there's a small chance that ideas violating our moral sensibilities are true, but even so we must never discuss them so if they're true we're out of luck and will never reach that true belief? Is it to say we may discuss them, but not rationally - that is, we must let the screaming protesters into the debate so that they can throw eggs and mud onto the debaters because that will improve the quality of discourse?

Also, I bet (and correct me if I'm wrong) that whatever debate you've watched was not about "Let's round up the [Other Folk] and execute them." My guess is it was either about allowing them voluntary euthanasia, allowing abortion or infanticide on the part of their parents, or ceasing to specifically allocate scarce health resources to them.

That means that what we're really talking about is "Any idea that can be massaged into sounding like an idea that violates our moral sensibilities is 100% certainly wrong, or should never be discussed, or needs more egg-throwing."

Comment author: Roxton 18 September 2012 06:55:27PM *  0 points [-]

[Off-topic discussion taken offline.]

Comment author: RichardKennaway 15 August 2012 06:51:42AM 2 points [-]

I imagine you will agree that the concept of "putting presumptions under erasure" is not something that expresses itself well in dialog.

It appears to me that you are not someone who expresses themselves well in dialog.

I shall refrain from imagining that anyone agrees with me.

Comment author: Roxton 15 August 2012 01:44:24PM *  0 points [-]

Except you totally do so imagine, because you could only get away with such dickish social signaling if my communication style was unacceptable in a group context.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 14 August 2012 01:43:55PM *  1 point [-]

How many people that self-identify as liberal would agree that liberalism is "the erosion of the presumption of a privileged ontology"? I would guess < 1%. Also, in what way does the Ten Commandments rely on a "privileged ontology" that human rights does not?

Comment author: Roxton 14 August 2012 06:29:28PM *  -1 points [-]

How many people that self-identify as liberal would agree that liberalism is "the erosion of the presumption of a privileged ontology"?

<1%. And that must be accepted as a criticism. However, I would contend that individual liberal battles can readily be perceived as fitting comfortably in this framing.

Also, in what way does the Ten Commandments rely on a "privileged ontology" that human rights does not?

I imagine you will agree that the concept of "putting presumptions under erasure" is not something that expresses itself well in dialog. You will notice that a hallmark of the occupy movement and human rights is that they are generally used vaguely.

This is because they "happen to categorize" the kinds of policies that are advocated when the rationalization of the status quo is put under erasure.

Now, I'll acknowledge that this framing fails because clearly powerful international organizations are asserting definitions of human rights.

I will suggest that this is a tool in the service of the paradigm mentioned, and then I'll acknowledge that this is a fully general counterargument.

And while I've explicitly lost the argument, allow me to ask you to hang onto it, because its corpse is still quite useful.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 14 August 2012 01:42:28PM *  4 points [-]

Quite. The "erosion of the presumption of a privileged ontology" sounds more like postmodernism, and "a creative gut context informed by predictive models and evidence", when decoded, seems to mean "inventing the conclusion you want and selecting theories and evidence to fit it".

In contrast, Liberalism tries to identify the ontologies underpinning the premises, and then encourages you to recognize that ontology as arbitrary, have the self-awareness to treat that ontology as a rationalization for your motivations, and decide whether you're willing to be a bully and acknowledge yourself as such.

This is an excellent example of the sort of bullying that constitutes postmodern discourse.

You don't even say whether you agree with any of this or not, but it doesn't seem intended satirically.

Comment author: Roxton 14 August 2012 06:05:41PM *  -2 points [-]

Cogently put.

The "erosion of the presumption of a privileged ontology" sounds more like postmodernism,

An accurate characterization, although I don't share your negative associations with the term.

and "a creative gut context informed by predictive models and evidence", when decoded, seems to mean "inventing the conclusion you want and selecting theories and evidence to fit it".

A reasonable decoding, which means I conveyed the point poorly. The core idea is that you recognize no particular framing as "special." Selecting theories and evidence to fit it would contradict that.

There are a thousand framings in which to consider menial subjects like... food, plastics production, coffee consumption, pain, sexuality, population growth. These framings must be arrived at creatively. To illustrate the complexity, I will add that these framings are, in turn, framed in the context of whether people care about them; how it relates to individual experiences.

These framings often present metrics. Mapping these metrics to a decision is not a deterministic process without arbitrarily privileging one or more framings.

An example of a framing is the old LW yarn comparing torture and minor eye irritants.

Where does evidence fit into this?

Evidence is the one thing, the only thing, that can be privileged without allegations of arbitrariness. (That said, evidence of how people experience things is still evidence.)

So, under this framing, a liberal is anyone who tries to capture all these framings (impossible!) and holding that massive ball of contradiction to their aesthetic eye, makes "educated" decisions pertaining to action or inaction, probably following the lessons of rational instrumentality.

So here's a crazy contention – people who do this tend to, in aggregate, make the same determinations. That's actually not surprising, given ev. psych.

Is it "correct"? No. There is no "correct." But it's a weird thing to argue against, because you'd have to privilege a frame to do it. For example, you could argue for embracing the naturalistic fallacy, because it works, thus, without thought or conscience, privileging your frame over all the anti-rape framings.

Comment author: Roxton 14 August 2012 11:52:11AM *  -3 points [-]

I believe you misframe the liberal position.

Liberalism can be meaningfully defined as the erosion of the presumption of a privileged ontology. Rational debate is possible, to the extent that it serves to undermine privileged ontologies.*

When somebody raises a proposal, the argument that might follow typically involves participants inferring and teasing out the relevant premises, and then arguing them.

In contrast, Liberalism tries to identify the ontologies underpinning the premises, and then encourages you to recognize that ontology as arbitrary, have the self-awareness to treat that ontology as a rationalization for your motivations, and decide whether you're willing to be a bully and acknowledge yourself as such. (I suppose OCPD creates its own motivations, allowing elegant and/or simpler models to dominate for some people.)

In the end, the policies adopted by liberals can't be argued for. They just can't be argued against effectively, except in a creative gut context informed by predictive models and evidence.

*(or creatively flesh out and validate/invalidate predictive models)

I would end the comment here, but I can't resist quibbling on one point. I believe you are confusing liberalism's erasure of the old regime with a rejection of regulation. Sex is more policed now than ever, in a state enforcement context, a social coregulation context, and a support system context – all this with dramatic consequences.

"Sacredness" is a word we use to create moral models around feelings. If liberals choose to "make way" for those feelings, does that mean they've bought into a sacralizing mentality? No.

Comment author: Roxton 14 August 2012 01:17:04PM *  3 points [-]

I feel like I'm getting a communal "No. Just.... no." here.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 13 August 2012 02:15:21AM *  24 points [-]

The thing is, what determines when autonomy is absolute and inviolable, and when it should be weighed against other concerns?

When it comes to interventions in human affairs by the state and other institutions, modern liberals pride themselves on their supposed adherence to (what they see as) rational and scientific cost-benefit analysis and common-sense notions of equality and fairness. They typically assert that their opponents are being irrational, or acting out of selfish interest, when they insist that some other principle takes precedence, like for example when conservatives insist on respecting tradition and custom, or when libertarians insist on inviolable property rights. In particular, liberals certainly see it as irrational when libertarians oppose their favored measures on the grounds of individual liberty and autonomy.

However, there are issues on which liberals themselves draw absolutist lines and lose all interest for cost-benefit analysis, as well as for concerns about equality and fairness that are perfectly analogous to those they care about greatly in other cases. Sex is the principal example. Liberals argue in favor of comprehensive intervention and regulation in nearly all areas of human life, but in contrast, people's sexual behavior is supposed to be a subject of complete laissez-faire. This despite the fact that many arguments that liberals normally use against the evils of laissez-faire and in favor of economic intervention, wealth redistribution, and paternalistic regulation, would apply with equal (or even greater) force to sex as well. Yet an attempt to argue in favor of more restrictive sexual norms on any of these grounds will be met with immediate hostility by liberals -- often so fierce that you'll be immediately dismissed as obviously crazy or malicious.

I don't think it's possible for liberals to salvage the situation by claiming that sexual laissez-faire is somehow entailed by the same considerations that, according to them, mandate complex and comprehensive regulation of almost everything else. This would be vanishingly improbable even a priori, and a casual look at the arguments in question definitely shows a glaring inconsistency here. The only plausible explanation I see here is that, just like everyone else in the human history, liberals base their sexual norms on a sacredness foundation -- except that for them, this foundation has the peculiar form of sacralizing individual autonomy, thus making a violation of this autonomy a sacrilege that no other considerations can justify.

Ironically, the sexual norms based on sacralized individual autonomy end up working very badly in practice, so that we end up with the present rather bizarre situation where we see an unprecedented amount of hand-wringing about all sorts of sex-related problems, and at the same time proud insistence that we have reached unprecedented heights of freedom, enlightenment, and moral superiority in sex-related matters. (And also a complete impossibility of discussing these topics in an open and honest manner, as witnessed by the fact that they reliably destroy the discourse even in a forum like LW.)

Comment author: Roxton 14 August 2012 11:52:11AM *  -3 points [-]

I believe you misframe the liberal position.

Liberalism can be meaningfully defined as the erosion of the presumption of a privileged ontology. Rational debate is possible, to the extent that it serves to undermine privileged ontologies.*

When somebody raises a proposal, the argument that might follow typically involves participants inferring and teasing out the relevant premises, and then arguing them.

In contrast, Liberalism tries to identify the ontologies underpinning the premises, and then encourages you to recognize that ontology as arbitrary, have the self-awareness to treat that ontology as a rationalization for your motivations, and decide whether you're willing to be a bully and acknowledge yourself as such. (I suppose OCPD creates its own motivations, allowing elegant and/or simpler models to dominate for some people.)

In the end, the policies adopted by liberals can't be argued for. They just can't be argued against effectively, except in a creative gut context informed by predictive models and evidence.

*(or creatively flesh out and validate/invalidate predictive models)

I would end the comment here, but I can't resist quibbling on one point. I believe you are confusing liberalism's erasure of the old regime with a rejection of regulation. Sex is more policed now than ever, in a state enforcement context, a social coregulation context, and a support system context – all this with dramatic consequences.

"Sacredness" is a word we use to create moral models around feelings. If liberals choose to "make way" for those feelings, does that mean they've bought into a sacralizing mentality? No.

Comment author: Roxton 19 July 2011 06:23:40PM 23 points [-]

If you want to promote the republishing of LW articles, I think you'd be more inclined to drop the Singularity/Futurism bits from the tagline. They're alienating and off-message, I think.

Also, when I try to share an article on G+, G+ pulls the following text for summary: "Less Wrong Discussion Future of Humanity InstituteSingularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Main. Posts; Comments. Discussion. Posts; Comments. Less Wrong is a community blog devoted to refin...". No good.

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