This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
It’s not a question of “agree to something unpleasant.” The problem being that because there are no lines that may not be crossed, that almost any act can become thinkable given the right set of circumstances. Me killing you to save others is thinkable provided that the others are either more valuable or there are more of them.
Ok, but again, I don't actually think that non-utilitarians are better about avoiding 'unthinkable trade-offs'.
Like, some number of christians or deontologist or virtue ethicists or whatever will in practice, in real life, trade some lives for others, either implicitly through policy or explicitly when faces with the rare real-world situations where that decision comes up.
Like, they don't actually just halt, stop, and catch fire in those situations when they encounter something their morality says is 'unthinkable', they just sort of make a decision, like everyone does, like normal.
And in those types of situations, I would expect utilitarians to mostly make better decisions and better trades, because they're allowed to think about and consider and make plans for those situations before encountering them, and just generally because of the habit of thinking about when and how to make moral tradeoffs.
I don't know if you have a more concrete real-world example you'd like to frame this under, I'm kind of at a loss for thinking of real-world instances besides things like 'risk your platoon to save one wounded soldier', which a. I don't know if that ever actually happens outside movies, b. I don't know what normal people actually do in that situation statistically, and c. I expect utilitarians to have no trouble applying hueristics like 'having faith in your comrades every day is more valuable than protecting the platoon the once every 20 years this actually comes up' or w/e.
I’m not saying it never comes up, but if I’m a deontologist, and I subscribe to the ideas in the Declaration of Independence (all men are created equal, they have inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness) then there are a lot of things that at minimum it would be very very hard to get me to do. Summary detention of a bunch of people isn’t something that should, in my view be on the table. There might be some extreme cases where you have little choice, but getting there isn’t going to be easy, and it would only happen when there’s no other options.
The problem with utilitarian thinking is that those very bright lines aren’t there as a check on behavior. I can do anything I want, with the only caveat being that in my calculations the results are better than whatever I assume would happen if I didn’t do that. And depending on what things I put more weight on, or in what parts of society I judge to be more important, or who I judge more important. There’s no reason why I couldn’t discount the welfare of the poor, or of minorities, or women, or gingers. There’s also no reason I can’t choose the welfare of the elites, the majority ethnic group, men, or bald guys as more important than everyone else.
More options
Context Copy link
I think a better way to understand the fundamental conflict is to think less in terms of "unthinkable trade-offs" and more in terms of "necessary evils" More pointedly that utilitarianism as it is typically advocated for in rationalist spaces does not seem to handle such scenarios gracefully. Instead of being able to acknowledge that [action] is bad but [action] was also necessary/understandable given the circumstances it instead seems to default to a position where [action] was necessary/understandable given the circumstances ergo [action] cannot be bad and must have actually been good or at least neutral.
I see Scott's defense of Fauci in this post here and his earlier posts on Kolmogorov Complicity and the Virtue of Silence as classic examples of the problem, sure sometimes betraying the public trust is the rational choice, but by betraying the public trust you have demonstrated yourself to be untrustworthy and can no longer honestly claim to be "the sort of person who cooperates in prisoners dilemmas" because you aren't, you're a defector.
That's just a semantics question over what "bad" means. You can say "hurting someone in self-defense is always bad, but sometimes it is the best option" or you can say "hurting someone in self-defense is not bad" and you're really saying the same thing.
Yes, and at the same time it also illustrates the fundamental problem with utilitarianism, namely that it is the ethical framework that makes it easiest to excuse one's own negative behavior.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link