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Notes -
I'll happily admit I've moved away from high-decoupling, although it is more in the sense that I've started to recognize "high-decoupling" is a lie, and no one actually does it, including self-identified high-decouplers. For example:
Farcical is, it? Did I miss the part where you've done comparative analysis of all moral ideas, and system, and have clearly shown some of them to be self-contradictory? Or are you just sneering at the ones you don't like?
I think Singer has done a good enough job that I have little to add of consequence. You're holding me to a ridiculously high standard here, one you don't particularly adhere to yourself, unless you submit a thesis paper with every condemnation of a moral system. So yes, I consider it farcical, and you're welcome to disagree at your leisure.
Did I misunderstand what you were saying, or were you just bemoaning people not meeting the standard you're calling ridiculous, just a moment ago?
Oh you understand me perfectly well, I disagree that I'm forbidden from calling something ridiculous with the ridiculous burden of proof you demand.
I just don't quite get how you're supposed to be better from us low-decouplers.
My reply to Meriadoc:
https://www.themotte.org/post/760/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/159447?context=8#context
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One thing that's salient about to me is that the Argument from Farcical Nature is so easily flipped and would like appeal to the majority of listeners. It's farcical that someone would object to as basic and normal a thing as an omnivore eating meat while defending animal fucking! I actually sincerely believe that position, but I don't expect that farcical nature to be compelling to someone that doesn't share the same intuition.
It is farcial to expect that all taboos are philosophically well-grounded, so if your morality is based on your instincts and the norms of the society you live in, the high decouplers are missing the point. And that does look like "something has gone wrong with the intellectuals, they're condemning normal people while allowing taboo things" from the perspective of the low-decouplers.
I do think self_made_human is correct that the ratio of low to high decouplers here has increased recently.
I suspect that many of our regular posters are simply putting their rationalist phase behind them and are ceasing to actively value decoupling.
Possible. My guess would be that if you took each user's comments over the past year, you would see minimal change in the decouplishness of that user's comments over the year, but if you looked at comment volume by decouplishness the fraction of comments by low-decouplers has increased substantially over that same year. Though I have not actually run such an analysis -- if anyone does, I'd be super interested in the results.
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