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The problem with the post-national view is that it has to be a consensus view globally. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. It has to begin with everyone respec

The problem with the post-national view is that it has to be a consensus view globally. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. It has to begin with everyone respecting broadly the same general ethics and views on rights. As it turns out, there are countries where women aren't allowed to drive, where religious autocracies rule, where whole populations of religious minorities are imprisoned and enslaved and the people of those countries support it happily. Do you want people with those values having a say in how you live? I don't.

sneak 7y ago
The problem is that values are not evenly distributed within a country. A nation is not a useful or even approximate proxy for values. Most countries have a pretty big chunk of people in them that would be fine with a religious autocracy that enslaves those who don’t conform to the majority, the US included. It’s the same in every country. There are, for example, a whole bunch of people in the US who are fine with some fiercely racist and inhumane federal policies, such as running concentration camps wherein many children are raped and otherwise sexually abused. Do you want people with those values having a say in how you live? I don't.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  >A nation is not a useful or even approximate proxy for values. What? Of course it is. Even if you went one level down, states in the United States itself are excellent proxies for the mean values that are held in a particular region. If your point is that every geographic region has groups of people on the fringe, then yeah fine. That's true. But that doesn't mean anything with regard to the usefulness of what makes up a nation or its borders - which are of course proving quite useful during a pandemic.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    I think your parent wants to say that the mean is not a particularly useful measure in the space of values because there are many fairly distinct clusters. People close to the mean might be a tiny minority.
  - sneak 7y ago
    > states in the United States itself are excellent proxies for the mean values that are held in a particular region. I don't think those are any more practically useful, correlated, or appropriate than the assemblage, unless you go down to states where the population numbers are so low as to be less than a really meaningful statistical universe. Populous states such as California and New York do not have anything remotely resembling universal buy-in on important values. Even within places like San Francisco, a single city/metro, you have a wide array of mutually exclusive value positions. As soon as you get people together in large groups, you are going to have a large diversity in values and priorities. These civil perimeters have very little utility; I think people just like mentally personifying groups/nations so that they seem easier to reason about, regardless of the fact that it's wickedly inaccurate and not actually useful for that purpose at all. This is reflected in the widespread practice of synecdoche/metonymy. China is a perfect example of this, as is California. (TBH, I think it's a leftover from serfdom, where the lords/regional owners literally held physical dominion over the persons, labor, and travel rights of the people who lived within their borders. The Pythons' sketch on the matter from MPATHG accurately sums up my opinions on even thoroughly modern political assemblages.) Personally, I reject the validity of all group identities that are based on sets containing more than a million or so humans. They're just not useful for reasoning about the group constituents, at all. > But that doesn't mean anything with regard to the usefulness of what makes up a nation or its borders - which are of course proving quite useful during a pandemic. Ah! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!
- creddit 7y ago
  > A nation is not a useful or even approximate proxy for values. I bet you anything that if you polled Saudi Arabians and asked "Would you be willing to be ruled by a monarch?" and then do the same for Americans, you'll get wildly different results. If you are willing to make the bet large enough, I will go to relevant polling organizations to pay for one to be conducted.
  - sneak 7y ago
    > I bet you anything that if you polled Saudi Arabians and asked "Would you be willing to be ruled by a monarch?" and then do the same for Americans, you'll get wildly different results. To my point, you'd get the same results in both places: some people in each country would say yes, and some other people in each country would say no. Assuming one's ideology based on their geography is entirely outmoded in the age of global information systems.
    - creddit 7y ago
      If your point is "a variety of opinion can exist everywhere" then sure but that's not great evidence that nations aren't an "approximate proxy for values". If it's 90-10 in one country and 10-90 in another it's clearly a proxy and not a great argument.
jopsen 7y ago
> The problem with the post-national view is that it has to be a consensus view globally. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. We can and are doing this at a much smaller scale. We have trade organizations that mediates disputes. And the US has been successfully pushing variants of the DMCA everywhere. A sovereign country could decide that copyright is no more (within its borders), but no developed country has done it. Most countries probably pay more in copyright royalties to other countries than they get in return. Isn't copyright also a prisoners dilemma?

sneak 7y ago

The problem is that values are not evenly distributed within a country. A nation is not a useful or even approximate proxy for values. Most countries have a pretty big chunk of people in them that would be fine with a religious autocracy that enslaves those who don’t conform to the majority, the US included. It’s the same in every country. There are, for example, a whole bunch of people in the US who are fine with some fiercely racist and inhumane federal policies, such as running concentration camps wherein many children are raped and otherwise sexually abused. Do you want people with those values having a say in how you live? I don't.

remarkEon 7y ago
>A nation is not a useful or even approximate proxy for values. What? Of course it is. Even if you went one level down, states in the United States itself are excellent proxies for the mean values that are held in a particular region. If your point is that every geographic region has groups of people on the fringe, then yeah fine. That's true. But that doesn't mean anything with regard to the usefulness of what makes up a nation or its borders - which are of course proving quite useful during a pandemic.
- adrianN 7y ago
  I think your parent wants to say that the mean is not a particularly useful measure in the space of values because there are many fairly distinct clusters. People close to the mean might be a tiny minority.
- sneak 7y ago
  > states in the United States itself are excellent proxies for the mean values that are held in a particular region. I don't think those are any more practically useful, correlated, or appropriate than the assemblage, unless you go down to states where the population numbers are so low as to be less than a really meaningful statistical universe. Populous states such as California and New York do not have anything remotely resembling universal buy-in on important values. Even within places like San Francisco, a single city/metro, you have a wide array of mutually exclusive value positions. As soon as you get people together in large groups, you are going to have a large diversity in values and priorities. These civil perimeters have very little utility; I think people just like mentally personifying groups/nations so that they seem easier to reason about, regardless of the fact that it's wickedly inaccurate and not actually useful for that purpose at all. This is reflected in the widespread practice of synecdoche/metonymy. China is a perfect example of this, as is California. (TBH, I think it's a leftover from serfdom, where the lords/regional owners literally held physical dominion over the persons, labor, and travel rights of the people who lived within their borders. The Pythons' sketch on the matter from MPATHG accurately sums up my opinions on even thoroughly modern political assemblages.) Personally, I reject the validity of all group identities that are based on sets containing more than a million or so humans. They're just not useful for reasoning about the group constituents, at all. > But that doesn't mean anything with regard to the usefulness of what makes up a nation or its borders - which are of course proving quite useful during a pandemic. Ah! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!
creddit 7y ago
> A nation is not a useful or even approximate proxy for values. I bet you anything that if you polled Saudi Arabians and asked "Would you be willing to be ruled by a monarch?" and then do the same for Americans, you'll get wildly different results. If you are willing to make the bet large enough, I will go to relevant polling organizations to pay for one to be conducted.
- sneak 7y ago
  > I bet you anything that if you polled Saudi Arabians and asked "Would you be willing to be ruled by a monarch?" and then do the same for Americans, you'll get wildly different results. To my point, you'd get the same results in both places: some people in each country would say yes, and some other people in each country would say no. Assuming one's ideology based on their geography is entirely outmoded in the age of global information systems.
  - creddit 7y ago
    If your point is "a variety of opinion can exist everywhere" then sure but that's not great evidence that nations aren't an "approximate proxy for values". If it's 90-10 in one country and 10-90 in another it's clearly a proxy and not a great argument.

jopsen 7y ago

> The problem with the post-national view is that it has to be a consensus view globally. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. We can and are doing this at a much smaller scale. We have trade organizations that mediates disputes. And the US has been successfully pushing variants of the DMCA everywhere. A sovereign country could decide that copyright is no more (within its borders), but no developed country has done it. Most countries probably pay more in copyright royalties to other countries than they get in return. Isn't copyright also a prisoners dilemma?