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 -
Aside from that plenty of claimed christian deontologists or liberals have committed similar scales of fraud over the years, meaning it's not clear EA somehow makes people more likely to commit fraud (crypto exchange rugpulls are incredibly common), 'deontology' and 'believing in business ethics' are rather different. Deontology is a claim about 'all morals and decisionmaking', business ethics are a specific set of rules (ones that basically all EAs and philosophical utilitarians endorse, afaik).
Also for deontology in a practical sense, the problem of 'which rules' confuses things, am i being consequentialist if I accept 'business ethics' instead of 'christian ethics' for finance? how do i decide that business ethics are better? aren't you just embracing rules 'deontologically' that were - literally - created by people who planned out the consequences of said rules? isn't that just consequentialism-by-proxy? Can I even think things like 'wow, liberalism and universalism maybe aren't ideal' under deontology, if those are the prevailing rules?
I mean the de-facto rules in crypto were, kind of, 'commit as much fraud as you can without getting caught'
I've argued before that ethics should be viewed as a stack, from virtue ethics to deontology to utilitarianism to consequentialism, where the core difference is the trade-off between ideal outcomes vs ease of implementation. My point is that the post you linked is, at best, arguing for accepting a trade-off down-stack in the case of business ethics. They want to implement a "No Fraud" rule because the risk of tricking yourself into harmful bullshit when doing business ethical reasoning on utilitarian grounds is too high, so you should just round off to "all clever plans to increase utility that violate standard business ethics should be assumed false on sight". And the way you credibly signal that commitment, is to switch to a deontological framework for those cases, instead of continuing in a utilitarian framework (which implies a whispered "unless it seems like a really good idea!" caveat).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link