MathWizard
Good things are good
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User ID: 164
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I think I would place less emphasis on the broader knockdown of transgender ideology in its entirety, and more on the specifics of this case. The kid is five, five year olds are easily influenced by trends, fads, and whims, and do not excel at long term planning. Even if it were possible to literally be born in the wrong body and change your sex to fix that, a five year old is going to have no idea how to diagnose that and commit to that. They have no idea what that even means. It is at least 99% likely that the kid does not have any medically recognizable form of gender dysphoria, so it's important not to commit to any changes that will be hard to walk back, even if those are just socializing as the wrong gender.
I suspect you'll have an easier time selling a plan of "Treat them as a boy for a couple years just to be safe and see what happens" than "transgenderism is entirely bogus", even if the latter is true. And convincing them of the former is 99% likely to solve the problem on its own.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
"there are a bunch of opportunists who will take advantage of children if they're given the opportunity"
There are here too. Maybe it would be more appropriate to refer to the entire grooming scenario as sexual abuse rather than just the surgery itself in isolation. That is, you have some sort of "therapist" who thinks that being trans is wonderful and good and better than being cis, which is a bias and agenda motivating their reasoning. Even if not strictly sexual in desire, they have ulterior motives of pushing the trans agenda. They then convince kids with mental illnesses or other social problems that the cause of their problem is being in the wrong body, push them down the trans chain, which ends in surgery. I would argue that this entire process is sexual abuse more than the surgery alone at the end of the line. And this is opportunists taking advantage of children given the opportunity, even if their motive is money and/or personal fulfillment and pride.
Accidentally injuring a penis during sex is also 'harm of a sexual nature', but it's not sexual abuse. Same for getting STDs.
None of this is accidental. Nobody is accidentally chopping off genitals. I agree that we can't take a purely consequentialist perspective completely devoid of intent, but the intent is to cause harm "for the greater good" rather than the harm being accidental. Purposely injuring a penis during sex is sexual abuse. I would argue that deliberately giving someone an STD, not just negligent sex while infected but deliberately acting with the intention to maximize the chance of giving it to them, is also a form of sexual abuse. Even if it doesn't meet some strict set of criteria that you might use to define the term, it's something comparably bad such that mislabeling it sexual abuse isn't carrying any false connotations.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
having gender transition surgery doesn't cause any of the bad things sexual abuse causes
I'm not convinced. It causes severe sexual disfunction, usually prevents the achieving of orgasm, will significantly interfere with the ability to have meaningful sexual relationships in the future, can cause long term body image issues and dysmorphia. While these are not a perfect overlap with the harms of more central examples of sexual abuse, and the mechanism it causes these through is more physical and less psychological (though still some), I still think that broadly they are in the same class as those of sexual abuse. It's (probably) not going to prevent them from living their daily life, or driving a car, or performing your job, or having ordinary friendships, but it is going to permanently cripple their ability to have sex and sexual relationships. The harm is primarily of a sexual nature, even if the action itself is medicalized and professional in bearing.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I mostly agree with the labeling of your specific examples, but I'm still not satisfied with motive as the determining factor. Consider a doctor who was deluded into thinking that sodomizing with a broom would cure cancer, so they regularly did this to child cancer patients with no ulterior sexual motives. I think most people would call it sexual abuse. It's hard for me to figure out which components of this are causing that: the action itself being generally sexual in nature, the nature of the harm to the child, or the doubt that the doctor's motives are really so pure. It might just be that such a belief would be so egregiously negligent that no one could possibly believe it except by biased reasoning motivated by subconscious pedophilic motives, but I still think even given a guarantee of the pure motives it would still count as abuse. In the realm of physical abuse, we might consider
A: a man falls and his fist strikes his wife by mistake
B: a man believes striking his wife will save her from demons possessing her so he beats her on purpose for her own good
C: a man is angry so he strikes his wife.
A is almost certainly not abuse, C is definitely abuse. B is probably abuse, the closest of the scenarios to actual medical transitions: an action, taken deliberately, with the same effect as regular abuse taken for purportedly good but dubiously intelligent reasons. Now, maybe if we made an example with more science and reasoning behind it we could make an even closer approximation that paints the man in a better light. Maybe leading scientific journals publish papers suggesting that reinforcement learning therapy is good: so if you beat your wife only as punishment for mistakes (and reward obedience) she'll become a better happier human being, and the man reads these and trusts the science behind them. But I still think the deliberate performing of the action with mistaken beliefs would count as abuse in a way that the mistaken action in scenario A does not.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Sexual abuse for my entire life has refered to using children for the sexual gratification, not just "abuse that involves primary sexual characteristics". Why not call it "child abuse" or "child disfigurement" except to free ride on the negative associations of the term? Same with "grooming".
I don't think this is true. The effect on the child is much more important than the perpetrator's motives, which are themselves mostly inferred and of minimal consequence to the outcome. For example, let's consider some scenarios.
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An adult with no sexual desires at all physically beats a child to punish them.
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An adult with no sexual desires at all sodomizes a child with a broom to punish them.
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An adult with a BDSM fetish physically beats a child because they secretly enjoy it (but makes no explicit targeting of sexual organs).
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An adult with a BDSM fetish sodomizes a child with a broom because they enjoy it.
I would argue, and I think most people would agree, that 2 and 4 are sexual abuse, while 1 and 3 are not. Meanwhile, the motive theory would categorize 3 and 4 as sexual abuse but somehow have to argue that 2 is not. And yet, as far as the child, or the law, or anyone who isn't a mind reader are concerned, 2 and 4 are indistinguishable, as are 1 and 3. I don't think it's any sort of free riding of negative associations of the term to group things together if the harms to the child are the same.
In the medical transition case, whether they are mutilating the sexual organs of a child for internal sexual gratification, or to punish the child, or to help the child because they genuinely believe it to be a good thing, or to virtue signal, or to "get back at the right", or for literally any internal reason, the sexual trauma to the child will be the same. Calling it sexual abuse is primarily a claim that the magnitude and type of the harm is comparable to other forms of sexual abuse. You ignored a significant part of /u/KulakRevolt 's claim, which I agree with
I cannot express how NOT euphamistic and how NOT a motte and bailey the accusation of grooming is. Right wingers do not believe "gender affirming care" is anything but butchery, that any transition social or biological is irreparably destroying a child's mental health and at the point of medical transition, their bodies as well.
These are not metaphors, these are not euphemisms, this is literally what the right believes is happening and they have THOUSANDS of weeping detransitioned boys and girls who no longer have sexual organs because some doctor hacked them off that they can point to.
It's not free riding, because medical transition is similar to in kind but actually worse in magnitude than most other forms of sexual abuse. Most sexual abusers don't permanently disfigure their victims in the course of their abuse. Some do, but those are the worse offenses for that reason. And sure, the medicalization and supposed consent and anesthetic surgery and whatnot make the process less violent and thus less severe in some aspects than violent rape would be, but that's exactly what the groomer label refers to: gradually indoctrinating children into agreeing to a sexual action that they don't fully understand the ramifications of, can't morally consent to, and will probably be bad for them. It doesn't matter what the internal motivations of the groomers are, what matters are the effects on the children. And again, the medical transition is similar in kind but worse in outcome than grooming for pedophillic sex would be, so it's not unfair to call it that and carry over the connotations.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I hadn't thought of that. I'm doubtful that this is the main cause, because this would still be pretty rare even in men, and I'm not sure that would be enough to create the stereotype. But it could be this.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
As a male (but not an especially masculine one), this is also very much not my experience, but I notice that most of the men I know also don't seem to have this either, even ones who are more masculine than me in general. So clearly something is wrong here. I only know my own experiences, and I don't ever think about literally nothing. I don't know what that even means, other than being unconscious. But I don't think it matches most of the men I know, so I'm mostly just extrapolating from there. It's probably not true, and if it's is true for some men it's probably not true of people who I encounter in my filter bubble. I'm torn between three possible hypotheses. In approximate order of how likely I think they are:
1: This is a made up stereotype based on conversation preferences. Nobody really experiences nothing in their mind, they just daydream about unimportant stuff and then when asked about it either lose their train of thought and forget, or are embarrassed by how silly it was. It's easier to tell your wife that you were thinking about "nothing" than it is to tell her you were imagining the broader ecological implications if squirrels didn't have tails, or that you were trying to find symmetries in the patterns on the wall, and then have her judge you and ask questions about what's wrong with you that you'd think about something silly like that. Or if you were imagining having a threesome with two of your favorite celebrities, and you think she'd get angry if you admitted something like that. It's entirely possible that enough men (not all men, but a non-negligible number) have negative experiences with women questioning their inner thoughts and starting conflicts over it, or they just don't enjoy having conversations when they're trying to have alone time to think, and they learn to say "nothing" as the easiest response. And if enough do this, and men do this more often then women, then it becomes a stereotype.
2: This is an intelligence thing, not a gender thing. Maybe people with IQ below a certain threshold really do space out and think about nothing sometimes. I suspect if you were thinking about literally nothing you'd be trapped there forever, you have to have some sort of route for external stimulus to reach your brain, but I suppose your conscious mind could be off while your unconscious is still on. Or more likely they're thinking about very little which gets rounded off to "nothing" when queried. This is pretty far from my experience, I suppose the closest I can think of is when I'm really sleepy and my thoughts seem to slow and get muddled. Maybe some people do this on purpose as a sort of micronap? I don't know. If this is the correct explanation, then I can think of two possibilities for why this is stereotyped as a gender thing. One possibility is that it is socially uncouth to criticize women in certain ways, especially about their intelligence, so if men and women both do this men who talk about women doing this will be criticized for being misogynistic, while women who talk about men doing this will be sympathized with. The other possibility is the male variability hypothesis. If this only occurs in people with IQ below 90, and men have higher IQ variance, then more men will have this feature, therefore the stereotype might get applied to men more. It could even be the case that there is a genuine gender component to this in combination with the IQ thing. Like, maybe it only happens to women with IQ less than 80 and men with IQ less than 90, so some couples with the same IQ might see differences across gender. Heck, it could even be the case that it never happens to women, and happens to all men with IQ less than 90, and it would still be consistent with lots of men in general having it, while none of the men you or I interact with have it.
3: This is a genuine gender thing. Some sort of hormone or brain structure or socially nurtured psychological patterns cause some men to sometimes think about nothing. That is, there is a common causal source (other than IQ) of many correlated masculine traits, and empty brain. The stereotypes are right, even if not universal, and you and I are just less masculine than all of the meatheads out there. Maybe I'm wrong about the inner worlds of the intelligent but not feminine men around me, and they do sometimes think about literally nothing, just not when they're around me. That seems vaguely plausible, if you actually pay attention while you're at work and socializing and save your sitting around thinking about nothing when you're alone at home.
Again, I think 1 is the most likely, then 2, then 3. But I suppose any are possible.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
While AI risk is on topic, I don't think relationship drama about internet celebrities is. I don't much care about EY or Aella's personal lives or relationships or whatever drama goes on between them or whatever other individuals, unless it has a direct tie in to tangible work on AI risk or other projects, or is being related to an interesting aspect of the broader culture war. This just reads like a soap opera script, I don't think I care.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I don't want to outlaw anything. Bans and especially criminal penalties seem like a terrible way to fix this.
We outlaw things for children all the time. Children cannot smoke, or drink, or have tattoos, or consent to sex with adults. Because it's bad for them, and any harms caused by restricting their freedom to choose what to do with their own bodies are outweighed by the high probability that they will permanently ruin their life because they don't fully understand the consequences of their actions.
Medical transition is a huge intervention with permanent life-altering consequences. It is way more harmful than smoking, drinking, or tattoos. You can even make a strong case that it's more harmful than literal violent rape, because at least then you can heal and go to therapy afterwards and don't have missing body parts (usually).
I don't see how you can make a case for transition of minors on this basis unless you're a consistent hardcore libertarian and believe the government has no right to ban children from doing anything that affects their own body, and no right to prevent other people from doing things children agree to. In which case the smoking/drinking/tattoos seem like bigger priorities since they impact a higher proportion of the population, and trans issues are a red herring.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I think it's important to still care about convincing the other side, because it's useful. We live in a democracy, therefore more public support for our side increases our chances of successfully implementing it. If we lived in a dictatorship with you or I in charge and could just ban it immediately, then authoritarian suppression would be the way to go to guarantee it stops as soon as possible.
If, in the current environment, everyone on the right gives up on persuasion and just decries their opponents as inhuman monsters then all of the areas controlled by the right will ban it, all of the areas controlled by the left will not, and everyone in the center will see one side pretending to be kind and compassionate while we superficially look like authoritarian bigots despite being the ones actually helping people.
In general, the right has a huge optics problem. Or rather, the left has an optics advantage because the majority of their positions are chosen based on optimizing for feelgoods and superficial appearances, which makes them look better than they are in practice. The only way the right (and moderates, and logical people who don't optimize exclusively for optics) can stand a chance is by being logical, persuasive, and thorough enough that the superficial appearances are stripped away and the actual superior policies are revealed to the people around.
Gender affirming care for minors is an evil policy with horrible results. Most people who support it from a distance aren't evil people, they're naive people who haven't actually looked into the details and have just bought into the propaganda that all anti-trans arguments are founded on bigotry and hatred. And you don't change their minds by acting the same way someone who irrationally hated trans people would act, if you try then they'll stop looking further as soon as you confirm their prior beliefs. You change their minds by being kind, compassionate, logical, explaining this in detail, and then banning child mutilation because it's the kind, compassionate, and logical thing to do.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Most of the zero sum part is in capturing a percentage of the positive sum that would have existed anyway. Especially in day trading, where the company has already received investments and the value created by the financial sector is just creating accurate and speedy value assessments, as well as liquidity.
Ie, maybe we have 100 traders/investors who, collectively, create $200 million in surplus value, $100 million of which is captured by them (and $100 million diffuses into the companies they invested in and customers and whatnot). A "fair" split would give each investor about $1 million in profit. But maybe one investor has an algorithm which let's them respond to news updates 10% faster than the others. And maybe this speedier algorithm actually helps create an additional $1k in value due to the more accurate valuations of companies. And then they use it to arbitrage $50 million of the surplus from the other traders, leaving them with $50.001 million, and everyone else with $500k. And then someone else makes an algorithm that's 15% faster, which creates an additional $1.5k in value (but costs $1 million to design and implement) which let's them take the top arbitrage spot and get the $50 million, and the 10% guy can only arbitrage $10 million, and the other 98 people have to split the remaining 40 million.
Ie, the group is creating surplus by filling an economic niche. The more competitive people are genuinely better and thus create more value, but most of their gains come from a larger slice of the surplus created by the nice. If they failed to exist, the second best person would create most of the value, so the marginal benefit from each increase in competitiveness is less than the potential profits extracted from capturing a larger slice of the pie.
This happens in a lot of physical industries. Amazon or Walmart aren't uniquely responsible for all of the profits they gain, because in their absence someone else would fill the role. And maybe that person would only be 90% as good and create 90% as much value. So in some sense the better company is uniquely responsible for 10% of their profits, and has shared credit for 90%. But instead they just get to keep all of it instead.
It's a weird issue, because we do want to incentivize the best people to be doing stuff, and the winner takes all system does accomplish that. But there is an inherent unfairness and issues with rentseeking behaviors which actually destroy wealth because they cost more than they actually create, but are worth it anyway because they capture more of the surplus created by the niche.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Only the base land value they add is affected by this. They still retain 100% of the actual capital value of the improvement itself. A grocery store is useful for putting things in and selling them, and refrigerating them and keeping bugs out. It earns more profit than an empty parcel of land that sells groceries out in the open. The grocery store itself is valuable in its own right above and beyond the value it provides to the land around it for people who like living near grocery stores.
So we're not looking at a scenario where building a structure creates 10 million in land value but the owner keeps 500k with no tax, with 9.5 million being captured by nearby landowners, and we hope that the personal incentive is enough to pay for grocery stores as long as we don't tax it. We're looking at a scenario where building a structure creates 10 million in land value and 20 million in capital value, and the owner keeps 20.5 million: all of the capital and 5% of the land value, while 9.5 million is captured by nearby landowners who didn't build the building (unless we are in the niche toy town). Taxing the land will extract 33% of the value created as tax revenue, while reducing the personal incentive to build by 2.5% of its actual value, because the majority of the value is the untaxed capital.
Yes this does decrease incentives by some amount (and all my numbers are made up, so it could be the case that it turns out to be a higher proportion). But you have to get taxes from somewhere, and lands are unusually high in externalities: the majority of the value is not created by the same people who own the land, even if some is, and therefore an unusually efficient method of tax value extracted relative to personal incentive cost (from either an economic perspective or a philosophical perspective). For most other taxes, literally all of the value extracted was created by the person being taxed, and therefore is worse than a land tax in which only some was created by the person being taxed.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I don't want to pretend that you don't have a point. This is in fact a point I've argued on the other side of against more radical Georgists who pretend LVT has no flaws whatsoever. It exists, it is a potential issue. And a nuanced, sophisticated version of Georgism would try to figure out a way to calculate this and either reduce the tax rate of someone based on how much of their land value was created by their own improvements, or use land tax revenue to give back directly to the people who are responsible for it (though this may be vulnerable to inaccuracies and corruption). Maybe you let large developers apply for a permit which exempts them from taxes caused by their own buildings, but you still tax them for the unearned rent on their land that is caused by other people's actions. Or maybe you make land assessment prices sticky that can't increase faster than a certain rate, so that rapid changes in land value from building things will increase its economic value immediately, without the tax price changing, which allows people to temporarily extract rent from them. But the tax rate slowly goes up towards the current value such that all of the long term value of the land caused by emergent social phenomena that no individual is responsible gets taxed and redistributed to everyone in society.
So ultimately, I think this is a niche problem which has potential solutions within the Georgist framework. Most people will still build the same as what they build now. Some people will actually build more if you remove nonland property taxes and force landlords to build to profit instead of squatting on valuable land. Only large developers relying on their own land value synergies will be disincentivized, and only if the land value tax makes no exceptions for them. It will cause some economic inefficiencies, but so do income taxes. Income taxes create tons and tons of inefficiency which are not niche. So if we're comparing system to a Georgist system, especially a nuanced Georgism which acknowledges the costs and attempts to mitigate them by having exceptions and setting tax rates below 100%, I still think it's the least bad tax.
I think you're missing distinction between base land value and capital improvements. You don't tax the buildings themselves, or the entire property value, you set the tax rate according to the underlying value of the land itself (which can be assessed separately from the building's value, and real estate agents do this all the time). Which is entirely externalities from other nearby stuff. Whatever value a property has from invested capital improvements contained within itself is exempt from the land value tax. If done properly, the incentive to build is the same as the incentive to invest money in any other form of capital (and the same the vast majority of people have when they build in the current system): you can either extract money from it over time, (which is not taxed in a full Georgist system), or sell it for a profit, which people are willing to buy because they can then extract money from it over time. In fact, people are more incentivized to build with land value taxes, because it's becomes the only way for a landlord to earn profit. You can't just buy a piece of land and sit on it as it appreciates in value, or extract rents based on its favorable location that everyone wants to be in. You have to build and upkeep structures that create value such that people are willing to pay to live there, or useful buildings that earn profit, above and beyond the taxed land rent value.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
And ideally you would tax that too. A sophisticated version of Georgism would include pigouvian taxes on behaviors with negative externalities, or natural monopolies, intellectual property, and other economic niches with fixed supply that one person snatching up deprives others of being able to do.
It's just that land is the easiest to assess and the most high value, and the most reasonably confident that most of its value is not created by the owner. Even if say, 5% of land value is created by real estate developers on their own property, that would mean 95% is not, either inherent to the land itself or created by other people nearby. So even if land value taxes are not entirely costless (although the more zealous Georgists pretend that they are), they're still one of the least bad taxes possible (only being beaten out by pigouvian taxes which disincentivize negative behaviors like pollution)
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Unusually expensive land is created by externalities of labor and capital. If a bunch of people build businesses and and apartments and stuff in a certain place, it will cause the land value of surrounding areas to rise. People working jobs and engaging in productive behaviors capture some of the value themselves, give some of the value to their customers, and have some of it diffuse into nearby land as rents. Except in the rare case where one person owns all of the land in an area, this added rent value is captured by a different person than those who rightfully created it.
Therefore, the workers wages are already being stolen. Well, not exactly stolen, it's not as if surrounding land owners are deliberately taking it from them. It's automatically taken by the nature of economics, that's how externalities work. Taxing it and then giving it back to the surrounding community actually gives the workers more of their own value.
At the very least, even if you're some radical libertarian who believes literally all taxes are theft, you should at least recognize land value taxes as the least bad tax for economic reasons of land values being inelastic, and thus a potential compromise given that you're never going to convince the majority of the population to shut down the entire government.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Georgist land value taxes are probably the best possible solution, and it is kind of annoying to constantly see people constantly being oblivious to them and conflating landlords with "the rich" as if capitalists who create products that people can consensually choose whether to buy or ignore are the same thing as landlords who hold not-homelessness hostage from everyone born without a huge amount of money to buy into the Ponzi scheme of land ownership.
A fair start to life is one in which everyone starts from zero, with nothing but the support of their parents and an equal share of the land and the bounty of nature. One in which you can go out into the land and use it to feed yourself and clothe yourself and build more and better things, and trade with others doing the same. In so far as land privitization of land has deprived everyone from the ability to do this, it is only fair and just that they be compensated for the value of the land. Not by giving them some vaguely defined "wealth redistribution" of arbitrary source or amount from "people who we think ought to help them", but by directly taxing the land equal to the value it provides as "rent", and distributing it to people either in the form of UBI and/or cuts to other taxes (or a combination of both). Anyone with less than an average amount of land should be paid by people with an above average amount of land (weighted by the land values). And if that's not enough to feed and clothe them, then they can work to make up the difference. But it will at least establish a baseline that removes the exploitation of landlords while not punishing capitalists who actually create value and inhibiting them from continuing to create value. (Also, reducing income taxes will significantly help employment rates and wages)
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Expected accuracy gain = number of viewers * probability of changing each viewer's mind * (probability the change was in the right direction - 0.5)
Performance during a debate is correlated with being correct, and having enough knowledge to know what you're talking about, and being founded on logical arguments rather than made up nonsense that breaks down immediately upon being confronted. It is weakly correlated with these things, which take a supporting role to charisma and public speaking skills, but they exist as a non-negligible part of the equation. Therefore, we expect the (probability the change was in the right direction) to be higher than 0.5 in most cases, though there can be exceptions for certain topics where the correct side is inherently difficult to understand or explain in a short time frame, or superficially distasteful despite being right if you deeply understand it.
And many more people are going to watch public debates and care about them than about written debates. Most people don't read on purpose. Many people are barely literate at all. And they and their opinions still matter, and persuading them is important. So a debate with a 70% chance of the correct side being more persuasive with 1 million views and a 5% chance of actually changing viewers' minds accomplishes more good than a debate with a 99% chance of the correct side being more persuasive with 100k readers and a 1% chance of changing each one's mind. As an individual, you're more likely to come away with accurate knowledge if you put forth the effort to read the thorough written arguments. But as a persuader you'll get more total support if you have the charisma to put forth entertaining and persuasive debates that more people will actually care about.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
I don't drink it personally, but my girlfriend uses it the same way you do: make fizzy juice. And mixed drinks sometimes, but usually juice.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
(This is probably a conversation for the culture war thread, not SQS, but whatever)
I sincerely doubt cynical men who are willing to disfigure their bodies and live a life of deception outnumber those who are sincerely dissatisfied with their lives as men and think living as women will make them happier.
I don't think that the latter category is necessarily excluded from "white males trying to become a marginalized group". That is, cynical exploitation of the system is sufficient but not necessary for this to be a factor. Some men are sincerely dissatisfied with their lives, and have been convinced that men are privileged oppressive patriarchs who oppress everyone else, and viscerally reject that identity because they don't feel privileged or oppressive and don't want to be. Instead, they are bullied and socially outcast and don't fit in with more masculine men, and thus feel that they must be part of an oppressed group. They are being oppressed by other white men (the bullies/normies), so they must be something other than a white man, hence trans.
Or something like that. I am not a clinical psychologist, I don't purport to know exactly what goes through the mind of someone in this situation (I was a weird social outcast, sort of, but very much not woke so I coped in completely different ways). And each individual is different so will have different responses to this situation. But it seems very plausible to me that social outcasts will look for reasons and excuses as to why they are different from everyone else, and why the people who pick on them are inherently evil in a morally objective way that makes them truly the bad guys. Taking on an oppressed identity makes your bullies into bigots and allows you to unite allies against them, even if they were previously bullying you for reasons unrelated to your identity. And, importantly, you don't need to be a cynical opportunist or a sleaze trying to sexually assault women, just be hurt and confused and subject to the same mental biases that everyone has that let us justify beliefs that are beneficial to ourselves.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Is that not what this is here though? You can't gather a few thousand peasants towards a common cause without at least discussing it among the other peasants. Discussing bad behaviors that we observe, criticizing them as bad behavior and making a reasoned argument about why the behavior is bad is the peasant gathering behavior. While calling out the king's hypocrisy to his face would be getting into an argument with the person who was engaging in the behavior.
Maybe the metaphor isn't quite right. This is not a brigade squad, and even if we get a thousand members to all agree that the behavior is bad we're not going to then set out to get into arguments with hypocrites and gang up on them. But at least noticing the behavior and specifying it helps to warn people away from falling into that trap themselves. I expect that people here are more likely to hold principled and non-hypocritical views, at least more than average, but it's by no means universal, either across people or even within the same person: you might be a hypocrite on some topics but not others. So pointing out common failure modes and warning against them can be useful.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
Are you arguing that hypocrisy should not be called out or criticized because everyone does it and therefore the accuser is also a hypocrite (and a meta hypocrite, for complaining about hypocrisy?)
Or are you arguing that complaints and criticism are pointless because the targets can simply ignore you and keep doing what they're doing?
And if so, does this generalize to an argument that complaints and criticism about any bad behavior are pointless because the targets can simply ignore you?
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
It's also consistent that the planet might be fully populated with a few billion people and have a fully functioning society comparable to Earth with all of its diversity intact.
It's also consistent that the planet is dominated by a sadistic alien race that will torture everyone who arrives there.
I don't think it's reasonable to infer too much beyond what the prompt says or implies immediately from the way it's formatted. And the simplest interpretation that seems consistent with it would be that the planet is habitable but empty of humans other than the 8 chosen. If they meant to just ask to save 8 human's lives and integrate them into a human society they wouldn't need to invoke planet destruction. The point of destroying the planet is that these are the only 8 humans that will be left in the universe.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2yr ago
This is a distinct problem in that they're going to colonize a new planet, not rejoining broader society as when evacuating a localized disaster. Thus, long term considerations are important. You're not just trying to maximize value of the lives currently being saved, but the long term potential of the human race stemming from these people, their reproductive potential, and their ability to survive in the wilderness. Hypothetically, if you had 2 adult men, 2 adult women, and 8 young children, you should save all the adults and 4 of the children, rather than saving 8 children, because otherwise they just starve to death and haven't really been saved. Whereas on a ship, on a non-destroyed earth, you should save the 8 children because they can be taken care of by society so are actually saved long term.
I find this incredibly relevant. Having a gigantic pile of insane laws that survive only because they're selectively enforced is a corrupt tyrant's wet dream. If everyone regularly commits felonies without realizing it, then everyone is at the mercy of the police and DA who can legally enforce these laws on whomever they dislike for any reason. It does matter, even if 99.9% never become the target of this selective enforcement, because the 0.1% who do will not be targeted because of their unique wrongdoing but because the powers that be chose to single them out, which can lead to a lot of bad stuff above and beyond jail time. Sure, you as a regular citizen won't be affected, as long as you keep your head down and never make someone in power dislike you. That incentive is itself the problem.
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