4 ms·

As I asked in my second paragraph, what if we got rid of the system but brought back the racist protectionism only? Would that benefit the community and all the

As I asked in my second paragraph, what if we got rid of the system but brought back the racist protectionism only? Would that benefit the community and all the other good things that are suggested above? Being very concrete, I'm suggesting that we take any protectionist system which uses a random number generator (e.g. first 10,000 people to apply get a sweet gig, everyone else is screwed and forbidden from economic competition) with a different random number generator (whether a person was born $rightrace). Nothing else. My emotions say the same thing about non-systemic racist protectionism, although your proposed solution suggests this should be ok. So I don't think your solution works.

pron 11y ago
> I'm suggesting that we take any protectionist system which uses a random number generator You're right, if you take any complex enough formula, and hide most of its variables and consider just the result modulo some number, it would look like a random number generator... And I think understand now why it may be hard for some people to see the variables, or why they'd insist on considering only some of the digits. What was the saying? "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his ideology depends on his not understanding it". But it goes beyond that. I really think that any interaction that is based on exercising judgment or negotiating a contract -- things that underlie most human interaction -- seems arbitrary to you. You need rules that can apply universally and without judgment. To you, judgment means too many variables that break the elegance of a simple formula; moreover, those are variables whose values are often hard to estimate precisely enough, and so the result can sometimes go either way, which to you seems like it might as well be random. And maybe I was wrong, and it's not about your choice of axioms, but that, like colorblind people, some things about human interaction escape your perception, and you fail to see why people would "randomly" favor one grey wallpaper over another. > your proposed solution suggests this should be ok Yes, I too am puzzled as to why dang is so much in favor of non-systemic racism.
- deleted 11y ago
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dang 11y ago
This is a trivializing form of argument. You can't abstract things out of their original contexts like that without destroying their meaning—at least not at any level higher than, say, the lambda calculus.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Why can't you? Are you suggesting that reason doesn't apply to morality or the real world? By abstracting in this way, we have a way to determine whether the principles we claim are important really are. In the case we are discussing, it seems like some other fact or principle from the original context is important. Which one is it, and why? If we can't figure it out, maybe we should consider the possibility that our emotional/cultural baggage is misleading us. At the very least we should have less confidence in our beliefs than before. Your critique seems very anti-intellectual to me - the claim that you can't reason about things outside their context seems like a cheap appeal to retreat back to our emotional conclusions. Am I understanding you wrong?

pron 11y ago

> I'm suggesting that we take any protectionist system which uses a random number generator You're right, if you take any complex enough formula, and hide most of its variables and consider just the result modulo some number, it would look like a random number generator... And I think understand now why it may be hard for some people to see the variables, or why they'd insist on considering only some of the digits. What was the saying? "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his ideology depends on his not understanding it". But it goes beyond that. I really think that any interaction that is based on exercising judgment or negotiating a contract -- things that underlie most human interaction -- seems arbitrary to you. You need rules that can apply universally and without judgment. To you, judgment means too many variables that break the elegance of a simple formula; moreover, those are variables whose values are often hard to estimate precisely enough, and so the result can sometimes go either way, which to you seems like it might as well be random. And maybe I was wrong, and it's not about your choice of axioms, but that, like colorblind people, some things about human interaction escape your perception, and you fail to see why people would "randomly" favor one grey wallpaper over another. > your proposed solution suggests this should be ok Yes, I too am puzzled as to why dang is so much in favor of non-systemic racism.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

dang 11y ago

This is a trivializing form of argument. You can't abstract things out of their original contexts like that without destroying their meaning—at least not at any level higher than, say, the lambda calculus.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Why can't you? Are you suggesting that reason doesn't apply to morality or the real world? By abstracting in this way, we have a way to determine whether the principles we claim are important really are. In the case we are discussing, it seems like some other fact or principle from the original context is important. Which one is it, and why? If we can't figure it out, maybe we should consider the possibility that our emotional/cultural baggage is misleading us. At the very least we should have less confidence in our beliefs than before. Your critique seems very anti-intellectual to me - the claim that you can't reason about things outside their context seems like a cheap appeal to retreat back to our emotional conclusions. Am I understanding you wrong?