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> Should we also not be obliged to suffer ... gay rights advocates? If you want to make a case that gay rights advocates make the world unambiguously worse, be

> Should we also not be obliged to suffer ... gay rights advocates? If you want to make a case that gay rights advocates make the world unambiguously worse, be my guest. At a societal scale, you will fail, because there is a clear and categorical difference between that example and mine. It's fine that not everyone feels that way. The people who think gay rights advocates make the world worse are wrong, and society has the right to judge them that way. Just because you can swap the nouns in a formulation of a policy and turn it from good to bad (or bad to good) doesn't mean that policy is wrong, or bad, or shouldn't be used. Social policy don't need to be content-agnostic to be useful. We can apply a policy against nouns that, in outcome, make the world better; and refuse to apply the same policy against nouns that, in outcome, make the world worse. We're gonna get those determinations wrong sometimes, and that's inevitable and fine, we can just course-correct and carry on in good faith.

DuskStar 7y ago
> If you want to make a case that gay rights advocates make the world unambiguously worse, be my guest. At a societal scale, you will fail, because there is a clear and categorical difference between that example and mine. My point was that 20 years ago, there are a hell of a lot of people that would have made that argument. There's probably still a double-digit percentage of Americans who believe that today. It's like evaluating a stock trading strategy on historical data - success there does not guarantee success in the real world, but failure highly implies it. Your proposed policy - which as far as I can tell simplifies to "ban advocating for things that a supermajority of the population finds distasteful" - would have prevented (or at least harmed) quite a few movements over the past century or three, and so I say that if implemented today it would do the same in the future.
- sagichmal 7y ago
  > My point was that 20 years ago, there are a hell of a lot of people that would have made that argument. I understand that's your point. And policy reflected that majority opinion back then. But, it was wrong, and we fixed it. That's fine. That's how things should work. > Your proposed policy - which as far as I can tell simplifies to "ban advocating for things that a supermajority of the population finds distasteful" I'm making no policy proposals. I'm saying society is justified in making moral decisions via policy, and in many cases is ethically obligated to do so. I'm saying that a blanket position of moral agnosticism by government (which is, as far as I can tell, what you're suggesting) is naïve in the best case, and actually actively unethical in the worst case, when that position prevents a society from protecting itself from disease. We still have courts even though there is the possibility of convicting the innocent, a society without a justice system is unworkable. In the same way, we still have the right and responsibility to make policy on moral and ethical grounds even though we might choose incorrectly, a society without that ability is unworkable.

DuskStar 7y ago

> If you want to make a case that gay rights advocates make the world unambiguously worse, be my guest. At a societal scale, you will fail, because there is a clear and categorical difference between that example and mine. My point was that 20 years ago, there are a hell of a lot of people that would have made that argument. There's probably still a double-digit percentage of Americans who believe that today. It's like evaluating a stock trading strategy on historical data - success there does not guarantee success in the real world, but failure highly implies it. Your proposed policy - which as far as I can tell simplifies to "ban advocating for things that a supermajority of the population finds distasteful" - would have prevented (or at least harmed) quite a few movements over the past century or three, and so I say that if implemented today it would do the same in the future.

sagichmal 7y ago
> My point was that 20 years ago, there are a hell of a lot of people that would have made that argument. I understand that's your point. And policy reflected that majority opinion back then. But, it was wrong, and we fixed it. That's fine. That's how things should work. > Your proposed policy - which as far as I can tell simplifies to "ban advocating for things that a supermajority of the population finds distasteful" I'm making no policy proposals. I'm saying society is justified in making moral decisions via policy, and in many cases is ethically obligated to do so. I'm saying that a blanket position of moral agnosticism by government (which is, as far as I can tell, what you're suggesting) is naïve in the best case, and actually actively unethical in the worst case, when that position prevents a society from protecting itself from disease. We still have courts even though there is the possibility of convicting the innocent, a society without a justice system is unworkable. In the same way, we still have the right and responsibility to make policy on moral and ethical grounds even though we might choose incorrectly, a society without that ability is unworkable.