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> Who says I want your shape for my society? I don't care what you want. I think my shape for society is better than yours, objectively better, better in the

> Who says I want your shape for my society? I don't care what you want. I think my shape for society is better than yours, objectively better, better in the ethical and practical sense, and every other sense besides. I'm laying out my reasoning for why it is I think that, and you can agree or you can disagree. We can both lay out our reasoning, and our conversation can be read by other people, and they can think about which version of society they'd prefer to live in, and they can work to make that idea a reality, too, if they like.

vorpalhex 8y ago
> I don't care what you want. I hope you have sufficient force to back up your desires then. The problem with any attempt at Utopia is that it becomes fascism, and fascism can only be maintained by force - which means suffering. Force is always met with force.
- sagichmal 8y ago
  > I hope you have sufficient force to back up your desires I don't need force. I just need to present my worldview in a way that's compelling to the peanut gallery. If I do a good job, I can convince them, and with luck, some of them can begin advocating for the same, more-ethical worldview I'm hoping for. Together, we comprise society, and can shape society in our image.
LyndsySimon 8y ago
> they can work to make that idea a reality, too, if they like. Do you believe this can be done without coercing some people to modify their behavior that would otherwise not harm others under threat of violence? That's the crux of my issue with this sort of thing - it's all well and good to hold a position and want to convince others through discourse; it's quite another to pass laws to codify that position so others are forced to live under them.
lliamander 8y ago
By reducing the totality of the human experience of suffering to a single quantity, you give your ethical framework the patina of objectivity. However, without an instrument that could actually measure this quantity, any governance structure based on your framework would be at the mercy of sophists, pity mongers, and empathy traps.
- sagichmal 8y ago
  > However, without an instrument that could actually measure this quantity, any governance structure based on your framework would be at the mercy of . . . All systems -- government, financial, computer -- are social systems, in that they're built with human beings as the foundation, and not the other way around. Because humans are subjective, squishy, and imprecise, it follows naturally and unavoidably that systems built on top of us need to accommodate those properties as invariants. They should not (because they can not) presume their foundation as some kind of objective, fixed, precise spherical cow of uniform density. Yes, measurement of suffering is subjective. No, that's not a reason to avoid doing it. It's precisely that subjectivity which makes the systems built on top of it sound.

vorpalhex 8y ago

> I don't care what you want. I hope you have sufficient force to back up your desires then. The problem with any attempt at Utopia is that it becomes fascism, and fascism can only be maintained by force - which means suffering. Force is always met with force.

sagichmal 8y ago
> I hope you have sufficient force to back up your desires I don't need force. I just need to present my worldview in a way that's compelling to the peanut gallery. If I do a good job, I can convince them, and with luck, some of them can begin advocating for the same, more-ethical worldview I'm hoping for. Together, we comprise society, and can shape society in our image.

LyndsySimon 8y ago

> they can work to make that idea a reality, too, if they like. Do you believe this can be done without coercing some people to modify their behavior that would otherwise not harm others under threat of violence? That's the crux of my issue with this sort of thing - it's all well and good to hold a position and want to convince others through discourse; it's quite another to pass laws to codify that position so others are forced to live under them.

lliamander 8y ago

By reducing the totality of the human experience of suffering to a single quantity, you give your ethical framework the patina of objectivity. However, without an instrument that could actually measure this quantity, any governance structure based on your framework would be at the mercy of sophists, pity mongers, and empathy traps.

sagichmal 8y ago
> However, without an instrument that could actually measure this quantity, any governance structure based on your framework would be at the mercy of . . . All systems -- government, financial, computer -- are social systems, in that they're built with human beings as the foundation, and not the other way around. Because humans are subjective, squishy, and imprecise, it follows naturally and unavoidably that systems built on top of us need to accommodate those properties as invariants. They should not (because they can not) presume their foundation as some kind of objective, fixed, precise spherical cow of uniform density. Yes, measurement of suffering is subjective. No, that's not a reason to avoid doing it. It's precisely that subjectivity which makes the systems built on top of it sound.