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When you say things like "we don't know the full story" or "suicide is tricky", you aren't taking a reasonable middle-of-the-road position you're effectively en

by gizmo 14y ago

When you say things like "we don't know the full story" or "suicide is tricky", you aren't taking a reasonable middle-of-the-road position you're effectively endorsing the status quo. By refusing to pick a side when there is a disagreement or struggle between groups of unequal strength you still pick a side: you side with the stronger group. When people are bullied, be it in the schoolyard on by the government, the power difference is immense. That means by default the bully will win. It's just that simple. We don't have all the information. In life you never have the information you need to make perfect decisions. But we can ask ourselves if we're OK with the status quo, and if not, try to change it. To reduce the whole affair to simply "Aaron killed himself." is crude and far from reasonable.

fusiongyro 14y ago
"If you're not for us you're against us" is a poor counterargument, no matter how eloquently stated. There must be room for more nuanced positions. If insufficient knowledge is not sufficient cause for having no position, the only possible result is complete polarization.
- jivatmanx 14y ago
  Perfect information is rarely available for any situation, yet one must interpolate the best that one can. It seems to me that we have more information than most. When more information is available, we then adjust (Bayesian interference).
jivatmanx 14y ago
It's for extremely perceptive comments like this that I read HN. Thanks Gizmo.
mindcrime 14y ago
By refusing to pick a side when there is a disagreement or struggle between groups of unequal strength you still pick a side: you side with the stronger group. "Blame" is an interesting concept though. In almost any complicated scenario, there is plenty of "blame" to be spread around and you can reasonably argue that multiple different entities are to "blame" for $WHATEVER. To use a somewhat tangential example... when Ron Paul talked a lot about "blowback" vis-a-vis US policy in the Middle East a few years ago, people said "Ron Paul is blaming America for 9/11". Well, yes... and no. What Ron was saying, in essence, is that there is culpability in multiple places, which is a more nuanced position than "America is good, terrorists are bad, Team America, Fuck Yeah!" OR "We were responsible for 9/11". So with that in mind... I don't exactly "blame" the prosecutors for Aaron's suicide either. But that doesn't mean I don't think they hold some degree of responsibility, and it doesn't mean I support the status quo, or that I don't want changes made in the law, the sentencing guidelines and the behaviour of prosecutors. IOW, it's not necessarily the case that either "side" bears 100% of the responsibility for what happened.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Basically my thought is that blame is not zero sum. Assigning some blame from one party should not in any way be taken to mean another party is not less to blame. Multiple parties could each be (for lack of better terminology) "100% to blame".
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    Have an upvote, for an interesting comment. I'm not completely sure I agree with the sentiment, but you make an interesting point. I'm not sure what exactly it would mean to say that two different parties are both "100% to blame" for something, but I suspect there's at least kernel of something there that I would agree with.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      As a simple and obviously rather obscure example to think about zero-sum blame, consider two men sitting in a room facing opposite walls. In front of each of them are identical control panels; in order to launch the nuke they both need to issue identical commands at the same time. Both should be considered fully responsible for anything that happens. I would would not consider "Well he turned his key too!" to reduce blame in any way, they would both be to blame just as much as if the system only required one operator. Wether this principle of non-zero-sum blame can be applied to situations less obviously engineered is something I can't really support, but it is a point of view that I hold.
  - benatkin 14y ago
    Mathematics isn't failing here. You're mixing contexts. If you look at it from the perspective of the victim, it's less than 100% of the blame. If you look at it from the perspective of a single perpetrator, they're 100% to blame because the other perpetrator doesn't absolve them of any of the blame. If you try to add the 100% of each perpetrator in isolation together, you're making an error.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
elteto 14y ago
A reasonable middle-of-the-road position would be to not take sides until enough facts are known about the subject at hand, and even then submit them to a careful analysis and consideration, context is very important. And also, a person must have the right to not be compelled to choose a side, even in the face of overwhelming evidence i.e. everyone can have their opinions independently of what is really going on, we might not like it but we have to put up with it. It is not about taking perfect decisions, it is about taking the best decision with the information at hand, and if there is not enough information, then I personally would not take a side most of the time (I am only human). And I say all this while myself taking what you would define as "Aaron's side". I am only debating the philosophical and practical implications of what you said.
wissler 14y ago
Thank you for saying that.

by gizmo 14y ago

fusiongyro 14y ago

"If you're not for us you're against us" is a poor counterargument, no matter how eloquently stated. There must be room for more nuanced positions. If insufficient knowledge is not sufficient cause for having no position, the only possible result is complete polarization.

jivatmanx 14y ago
Perfect information is rarely available for any situation, yet one must interpolate the best that one can. It seems to me that we have more information than most. When more information is available, we then adjust (Bayesian interference).

jivatmanx 14y ago

It's for extremely perceptive comments like this that I read HN. Thanks Gizmo.

mindcrime 14y ago

By refusing to pick a side when there is a disagreement or struggle between groups of unequal strength you still pick a side: you side with the stronger group. "Blame" is an interesting concept though. In almost any complicated scenario, there is plenty of "blame" to be spread around and you can reasonably argue that multiple different entities are to "blame" for $WHATEVER. To use a somewhat tangential example... when Ron Paul talked a lot about "blowback" vis-a-vis US policy in the Middle East a few years ago, people said "Ron Paul is blaming America for 9/11". Well, yes... and no. What Ron was saying, in essence, is that there is culpability in multiple places, which is a more nuanced position than "America is good, terrorists are bad, Team America, Fuck Yeah!" OR "We were responsible for 9/11". So with that in mind... I don't exactly "blame" the prosecutors for Aaron's suicide either. But that doesn't mean I don't think they hold some degree of responsibility, and it doesn't mean I support the status quo, or that I don't want changes made in the law, the sentencing guidelines and the behaviour of prosecutors. IOW, it's not necessarily the case that either "side" bears 100% of the responsibility for what happened.

jlgreco 14y ago
Basically my thought is that blame is not zero sum. Assigning some blame from one party should not in any way be taken to mean another party is not less to blame. Multiple parties could each be (for lack of better terminology) "100% to blame".
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Have an upvote, for an interesting comment. I'm not completely sure I agree with the sentiment, but you make an interesting point. I'm not sure what exactly it would mean to say that two different parties are both "100% to blame" for something, but I suspect there's at least kernel of something there that I would agree with.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    As a simple and obviously rather obscure example to think about zero-sum blame, consider two men sitting in a room facing opposite walls. In front of each of them are identical control panels; in order to launch the nuke they both need to issue identical commands at the same time. Both should be considered fully responsible for anything that happens. I would would not consider "Well he turned his key too!" to reduce blame in any way, they would both be to blame just as much as if the system only required one operator. Wether this principle of non-zero-sum blame can be applied to situations less obviously engineered is something I can't really support, but it is a point of view that I hold.
- benatkin 14y ago
  Mathematics isn't failing here. You're mixing contexts. If you look at it from the perspective of the victim, it's less than 100% of the blame. If you look at it from the perspective of a single perpetrator, they're 100% to blame because the other perpetrator doesn't absolve them of any of the blame. If you try to add the 100% of each perpetrator in isolation together, you're making an error.
  - jlgreco 14y ago

elteto 14y ago

A reasonable middle-of-the-road position would be to not take sides until enough facts are known about the subject at hand, and even then submit them to a careful analysis and consideration, context is very important. And also, a person must have the right to not be compelled to choose a side, even in the face of overwhelming evidence i.e. everyone can have their opinions independently of what is really going on, we might not like it but we have to put up with it. It is not about taking perfect decisions, it is about taking the best decision with the information at hand, and if there is not enough information, then I personally would not take a side most of the time (I am only human). And I say all this while myself taking what you would define as "Aaron's side". I am only debating the philosophical and practical implications of what you said.

wissler 14y ago

Thank you for saying that.