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Proof? So you're telling me you don't understand what a "principle" is basically. I define autonomy exactly how I said it. Adults should be able to do with thei

by advael 2y ago

Proof? So you're telling me you don't understand what a "principle" is basically. I define autonomy exactly how I said it. Adults should be able to do with their own bodies as they see fit, including consenting to any and every act done with another consenting adult. I say adults here because I do believe carving out some small exceptions for people who aren't fully able to take care of themselves is necessary, but I also think minors should have way more rights than most governments give them, just not all of those we afford adults The entire concept of "human rights" is premised on the idea that there are some principles that should override "the will of the people", which without any kind of protections of rights amounts to simple mob rule. I don't think you should get to lynch someone because the whole village doesn't like them, and I don't think the government should get to tell you what to do in the bedroom or what drugs you can take, regardless of what you can get a howling mob to think. I swear they don't teach people basic ethics these days. Or maybe it's just tech people? No wonder this industry's a garbage fire right now

rayiner 2y ago
But who cares about your principles? Why should your non-falsifiable, non-scientific, non-empirical assertions about the nature of reality matter more than those of the mob? You're just articulating a quasi-religious belief, and appointing ourself as the clergy of this quasi-religion, without admitting that's what you're doing.
- advael 2y ago
  Cool analogy didja learn it in middle school english? Seems everyone and their grandma wants to hold the torch of "rationality" and declare anyone who has an actual belief about something "dogmatic." It's intellectually facile and morally bankrupt But no, fool, the principle of autonomy, or in this context that "the state shouldn't make decisions about what individuals can do to and using their own bodies" is not an arbitrary moral position, it's a meta-norm that has deep mechanism design implications in a functioning cosmopolitan society, ones that the balance of evidence suggest make that society work better for everyone except for the very lucky tiny percent of authoritarian busybodies that win the inevitable holy wars that come of structuring society around the premise that a state should be able to micromanage your individual life. I say that we have not achieved a state that truly doesn't meddle in this way (and one that are closest have in some senses backslid in the last century or so), but every move in that direction has produced both stability and prosperity The very mindset you're espousing, that no one person's morals should determine the law, is a derived principle of enlightenment liberality. It's exactly why populism can't create a stable functioning human society Liberality and consensual autonomy isn't a charter for total nihilist moral relativism and it doesn't call for every decision to be made by pure mob rule, it calls for government to act as a superstructure to allow democracy without lynchings and pogroms against political dissenters and laws against sex you don't like. It's a technology, not a religion Moral nihilism doesn't imply that you're wise, it implies that you're spineless
  - rayiner 2y ago
    > every move in that direction has produced both stability and prosperity Theatrics aside, it seems like you’re saying that the basis of your “principle” is empirical effectiveness. That is of course a reasonable secular basis for lawmaking. But that confronts two problems: 1) That still doesn’t give you a justification for overriding the democratic will. Empirical effectiveness is evidence that you might submit to the public about what policies would be beneficial. That doesn’t transform it into some “meta-norm” that by its own force overrides democratic law. We have tremendous evidence that market economies are better than planned economies. But only kooky right-wingers think that makes capitalism a “meta-norm” that must override the popular will! 2) Your historical analysis falls short. China’s rise shows you can become rich and prosperous without embracing bodily autonomy as a principle. Even moral regulation of individuals in the west was quite stringent during the period when the west was getting rich—moreso than societies that were less regimented but didn’t get rich. Victorian England, for example, was a high water mark. Moreover, the societies that have gone the furthest in embracing notions of bodily autonomy are uniformly on the path to extinction. Western Europe is slowly being replaced by Muslims from cultures that reject such notions.
    - advael 2y ago
      I mean actually nearly any resistance to an extremely oligarchy-friendly neoliberal idea of "free markets" is considered a fringe extremist position in at least the US and the UK, both in terms of the attitude of the culture at large and the levers of power available to anyone, so you must be in quite the left-wing bubble to believe that this is viewed as "kooky" by society at large. I agree with you that for most purposes meta-norms that create free markets (Which in many cases flows completely logically from a meta-norm of autonomy) are better for human flourishing than planned economies, including both cartel-planned ones and government-planned ones, with a few exceptions for things considered infrastructure where the incentives of a market are an ill fit to create guarantees of stability over long timescales. If you live in a western democracy, the vast overwhelming majority of people agree with that. I point out cartel-driven cronyism specifically because I would argue that most rich economies are not operating as free markets, but are essentially using the government as an enforcement arm of the power of incumbent players in many industries. I think that as compared to when this was less true, many of the societies underlying those economies are going into a bit of a tailspin, and that moving more toward free markets would actually do quite a bit to stop the bleeding and maybe turn it around. However, in term of pathos, "free trade" is still so popular that the kleptocrats who benefit from the capture of governmental institutions by industry constantly claim that is what they are doing to anyone who will listen, and the extant fringe of support for communism seeing a very slight uptick in recent years can be mostly explained as a backlash to these obvious lies told by those in power. Often backlashes are quite reactionary, and also water is wet This absolutely delusional view of popular opinion and government priorities - along with the Great Replacement conspiracy nonsense - has led me to conclude that your preoccupation with the accusation that "people who merely believe in free markets" are right wing kooks might have more to do with your own being objectively and obviously a right-wing kook living in a fantasy world than it has to do with any reality about the general public's attitudes and beliefs in aggregate. Of course if you're one step from joining the next great wave of populist fascisms you think everyone's a tankie. Anyway, I think it's pointless to try to talk sense into someone who believes that anything remotely resembling "muslims taking over" is a serious existential threat to like, all of NATO? or whatever counts as "Western" this week, (Or for that matter, somehow an existential threat to white people as a whole worldwide, which seems to be what you lot tend to actually mean by that euphemism). There is a real war going on in Europe that has nothing to do with muslims, and you idiots worry about a slight uptick in brown people immigrating because some charismatic suits told you to. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. I'll leave you to your frothing madness

by advael 2y ago

rayiner 2y ago

But who cares about your principles? Why should your non-falsifiable, non-scientific, non-empirical assertions about the nature of reality matter more than those of the mob? You're just articulating a quasi-religious belief, and appointing ourself as the clergy of this quasi-religion, without admitting that's what you're doing.

advael 2y ago
Cool analogy didja learn it in middle school english? Seems everyone and their grandma wants to hold the torch of "rationality" and declare anyone who has an actual belief about something "dogmatic." It's intellectually facile and morally bankrupt But no, fool, the principle of autonomy, or in this context that "the state shouldn't make decisions about what individuals can do to and using their own bodies" is not an arbitrary moral position, it's a meta-norm that has deep mechanism design implications in a functioning cosmopolitan society, ones that the balance of evidence suggest make that society work better for everyone except for the very lucky tiny percent of authoritarian busybodies that win the inevitable holy wars that come of structuring society around the premise that a state should be able to micromanage your individual life. I say that we have not achieved a state that truly doesn't meddle in this way (and one that are closest have in some senses backslid in the last century or so), but every move in that direction has produced both stability and prosperity The very mindset you're espousing, that no one person's morals should determine the law, is a derived principle of enlightenment liberality. It's exactly why populism can't create a stable functioning human society Liberality and consensual autonomy isn't a charter for total nihilist moral relativism and it doesn't call for every decision to be made by pure mob rule, it calls for government to act as a superstructure to allow democracy without lynchings and pogroms against political dissenters and laws against sex you don't like. It's a technology, not a religion Moral nihilism doesn't imply that you're wise, it implies that you're spineless
- rayiner 2y ago
  > every move in that direction has produced both stability and prosperity Theatrics aside, it seems like you’re saying that the basis of your “principle” is empirical effectiveness. That is of course a reasonable secular basis for lawmaking. But that confronts two problems: 1) That still doesn’t give you a justification for overriding the democratic will. Empirical effectiveness is evidence that you might submit to the public about what policies would be beneficial. That doesn’t transform it into some “meta-norm” that by its own force overrides democratic law. We have tremendous evidence that market economies are better than planned economies. But only kooky right-wingers think that makes capitalism a “meta-norm” that must override the popular will! 2) Your historical analysis falls short. China’s rise shows you can become rich and prosperous without embracing bodily autonomy as a principle. Even moral regulation of individuals in the west was quite stringent during the period when the west was getting rich—moreso than societies that were less regimented but didn’t get rich. Victorian England, for example, was a high water mark. Moreover, the societies that have gone the furthest in embracing notions of bodily autonomy are uniformly on the path to extinction. Western Europe is slowly being replaced by Muslims from cultures that reject such notions.
  - advael 2y ago
    I mean actually nearly any resistance to an extremely oligarchy-friendly neoliberal idea of "free markets" is considered a fringe extremist position in at least the US and the UK, both in terms of the attitude of the culture at large and the levers of power available to anyone, so you must be in quite the left-wing bubble to believe that this is viewed as "kooky" by society at large. I agree with you that for most purposes meta-norms that create free markets (Which in many cases flows completely logically from a meta-norm of autonomy) are better for human flourishing than planned economies, including both cartel-planned ones and government-planned ones, with a few exceptions for things considered infrastructure where the incentives of a market are an ill fit to create guarantees of stability over long timescales. If you live in a western democracy, the vast overwhelming majority of people agree with that. I point out cartel-driven cronyism specifically because I would argue that most rich economies are not operating as free markets, but are essentially using the government as an enforcement arm of the power of incumbent players in many industries. I think that as compared to when this was less true, many of the societies underlying those economies are going into a bit of a tailspin, and that moving more toward free markets would actually do quite a bit to stop the bleeding and maybe turn it around. However, in term of pathos, "free trade" is still so popular that the kleptocrats who benefit from the capture of governmental institutions by industry constantly claim that is what they are doing to anyone who will listen, and the extant fringe of support for communism seeing a very slight uptick in recent years can be mostly explained as a backlash to these obvious lies told by those in power. Often backlashes are quite reactionary, and also water is wet This absolutely delusional view of popular opinion and government priorities - along with the Great Replacement conspiracy nonsense - has led me to conclude that your preoccupation with the accusation that "people who merely believe in free markets" are right wing kooks might have more to do with your own being objectively and obviously a right-wing kook living in a fantasy world than it has to do with any reality about the general public's attitudes and beliefs in aggregate. Of course if you're one step from joining the next great wave of populist fascisms you think everyone's a tankie. Anyway, I think it's pointless to try to talk sense into someone who believes that anything remotely resembling "muslims taking over" is a serious existential threat to like, all of NATO? or whatever counts as "Western" this week, (Or for that matter, somehow an existential threat to white people as a whole worldwide, which seems to be what you lot tend to actually mean by that euphemism). There is a real war going on in Europe that has nothing to do with muslims, and you idiots worry about a slight uptick in brown people immigrating because some charismatic suits told you to. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. I'll leave you to your frothing madness