3 ms·

It's been clearly documented that women are subject to lower wages(1) then men and while I don't have statistics about online harassment, women accounted for 84

by dkoston 13y ago

It's been clearly documented that women are subject to lower wages(1) then men and while I don't have statistics about online harassment, women accounted for 84% of potential workplace harassment victims in 2007(2) which may or may not be similar to the online harassment gap. USC also did a study noting that men are less empathetic to discrimination(3) which can cause even more harm. You argue that choosing any subset is arbitrary but it is clearly not if we choose that subset based on a set of data that shows behavior which society disapproves of (attaching criteria to our subset inherently makes it non-arbitrary). Now, you could argue that choosing women as a subset is arbitrary because you don't think that the representation of people on money should be correlated to population statistics. However, why are you arguing against correlation for pictures on money but not also arguing that nothing should be correlated to population statistics at all (or perhaps your comment wasn't perfectly written? same as the article?). In general, it seems that you are also choosing to be arbitrary as well. In addition, you seem to lack compassion for other people who are expressing their concerns about their right to live a happy life, free from harassment. Whether or not you agree with the small details in the article or whether or not they are 100% accurate is not important. If you can't read the article for the overall concept it purveys, and feel some sympathy for the author, I feel sorry for you. (1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21698522 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21698522 (2) http://www.workharassment.net/index.php/sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace.html http://www.workharassment.net/index.php/sexual-harassment-in... (3) http://www.livescience.com/2428-men-discrimination-women.html http://www.livescience.com/2428-men-discrimination-women.htm...

yummyfajitas 13y ago
Give me 85,000 people who have been victims of workplace harassment (of any gender), 15,000 more random people, and I've found a group who has suffered more workplace harassment than women. Why do you assign this arbitrary group no moral/political weight? (Again: there are orders of magnitude more such subgroups of Britain than there are cells in the human body. I don't understand how you pick one to the exclusion of all others.) However, why are you arguing against... I'm arguing nothing - I merely asked why CJefferson found a lack of non-royal women on money unacceptable. Then I asked drcongo (and later you and aaren) about your underlying political/moral philosophy. But everyone seems to be ducking the fundamental question. So I'll ask one more time before I give up. Consider a statistical reference class X, which suffers disproportionately from one or more harms. How do I determine whether X deserves moral/political consideration of the sort you are advocating for? (E.g., we should make sure more of X has their picture printed on money.)
- aaren 13y ago
  The set W of women suffer harms because of their membership of that set. This property is mutable. You could make a number of other sets like this (non-white, old, young), but the largest one (esp. in the UK) is likely to be W, women (50% population). We should try and create an environment in which sets of people do not have this property anymore.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    A set doesn't suffer anything, only individuals suffer. Some women (say 80%, for concreteness) have suffered because they are women. Consider the set WM consisting of those 80%, plus a random 20% of men. WM has the same statistical properties as W - it's members have suffered harms due to being a member of the set of suffering women + random people, and this group is also 50% of Britain. Is WM due the same moral consideration as W? You can't use only the statistical properties of a subset to determine it's moral weight. For nearly any statistic you can think of, there are massive (i.e., 2^bignum >> population of earth) numbers of statistically identical subsets.
    - aaren 13y ago
      WM's members don't suffer harms because they are a member of WM. They suffer harms because they are members of W. Women are a significant population in the uk. It has been shown that this population suffer some harms only because of their being women. This is wrong.
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        Is the distinguishing principle you are trying to arrive at merely the motive of the people harming them? I.e., is the principle along the lines of "If a bunch of jerks define and disproportionately harm group X, then we now assign moral weight to group X"?
    - dkoston 13y ago
      You can't use only the statistical properties of a subset to determine it's moral weight. For nearly any statistic you can think of, there are massive (i.e., 2^bignum >> population of earth) numbers of statistically identical subsets. A core part of this disagreement/discussion is that there is no accepted formula for determining moral weight. It's certainly fine to have a discussion at more of a core philosophical level but I think that your arguments would more accepted by the HN audience if you would provide more context about what level of depth you are choosing to discuss instead of calling the article "ridiculous" and providing a single data point about one of the many thoughts posed by the article. Most people responding are considering the current state of the world and what incremental actions they would take to improve it, not philosophical questions like "what is a harm?", "which harms are worst?", "should we eliminate harms?", "is it right to eliminate harms from one group over another?" There are many tough questions that need to be answered before you can even discuss selecting or not selecting groups of people and considering their moral weight. Without posing or answering questions like "what is a harm?", "what harms are not permissible?", and "should we eliminate harms?", it's impossible to know whether or not we will be at a philosophical impasse when asking "should one group get additional weight for societal protection from harms over others?".

by dkoston 13y ago

yummyfajitas 13y ago

Give me 85,000 people who have been victims of workplace harassment (of any gender), 15,000 more random people, and I've found a group who has suffered more workplace harassment than women. Why do you assign this arbitrary group no moral/political weight? (Again: there are orders of magnitude more such subgroups of Britain than there are cells in the human body. I don't understand how you pick one to the exclusion of all others.) However, why are you arguing against... I'm arguing nothing - I merely asked why CJefferson found a lack of non-royal women on money unacceptable. Then I asked drcongo (and later you and aaren) about your underlying political/moral philosophy. But everyone seems to be ducking the fundamental question. So I'll ask one more time before I give up. Consider a statistical reference class X, which suffers disproportionately from one or more harms. How do I determine whether X deserves moral/political consideration of the sort you are advocating for? (E.g., we should make sure more of X has their picture printed on money.)

aaren 13y ago
The set W of women suffer harms because of their membership of that set. This property is mutable. You could make a number of other sets like this (non-white, old, young), but the largest one (esp. in the UK) is likely to be W, women (50% population). We should try and create an environment in which sets of people do not have this property anymore.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  A set doesn't suffer anything, only individuals suffer. Some women (say 80%, for concreteness) have suffered because they are women. Consider the set WM consisting of those 80%, plus a random 20% of men. WM has the same statistical properties as W - it's members have suffered harms due to being a member of the set of suffering women + random people, and this group is also 50% of Britain. Is WM due the same moral consideration as W? You can't use only the statistical properties of a subset to determine it's moral weight. For nearly any statistic you can think of, there are massive (i.e., 2^bignum >> population of earth) numbers of statistically identical subsets.
  - aaren 13y ago
    WM's members don't suffer harms because they are a member of WM. They suffer harms because they are members of W. Women are a significant population in the uk. It has been shown that this population suffer some harms only because of their being women. This is wrong.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      Is the distinguishing principle you are trying to arrive at merely the motive of the people harming them? I.e., is the principle along the lines of "If a bunch of jerks define and disproportionately harm group X, then we now assign moral weight to group X"?
  - dkoston 13y ago
    You can't use only the statistical properties of a subset to determine it's moral weight. For nearly any statistic you can think of, there are massive (i.e., 2^bignum >> population of earth) numbers of statistically identical subsets. A core part of this disagreement/discussion is that there is no accepted formula for determining moral weight. It's certainly fine to have a discussion at more of a core philosophical level but I think that your arguments would more accepted by the HN audience if you would provide more context about what level of depth you are choosing to discuss instead of calling the article "ridiculous" and providing a single data point about one of the many thoughts posed by the article. Most people responding are considering the current state of the world and what incremental actions they would take to improve it, not philosophical questions like "what is a harm?", "which harms are worst?", "should we eliminate harms?", "is it right to eliminate harms from one group over another?" There are many tough questions that need to be answered before you can even discuss selecting or not selecting groups of people and considering their moral weight. Without posing or answering questions like "what is a harm?", "what harms are not permissible?", and "should we eliminate harms?", it's impossible to know whether or not we will be at a philosophical impasse when asking "should one group get additional weight for societal protection from harms over others?".