RE: Whose business is it, anyway?

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Jan 09 2003 - 09:37:17 MST


Eliezer writes

> Incidentally, I feel that "should" is a perfectly good word, and one which
> has a meaning going beyond who got persuaded of what. But in deference to
> your view of these matters, I have attempted to restrain myself to
> describing phenomena which you will find more readily observable.

I agree completely that "should" is not usually a sign of
non-realistic thinking, and can almost always be reworded
towards "approval" and "has been found to work well" and
"is consistent with normal people's intuitions" and so on.

I also very much appreciate your effort to restrict yourself
as much as one can to the observable, within reason.

> Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> > One solution that appalls me is for certain strident types
> > to consult themselves as to what they like and don't like
> > ("drugs BAD!", "cutting off arms BAD!") and then rationalize
> > like crazy to justify their imposing their conclusions by
> > force or by majority tyranny.
>
> Are you really in a position to say that? You've never explained exactly
> when you think force is justified... just resorted to your intuitions
> about when something is and isn't "your business".

Following PCR conventions, one sees the word "justified" as
a danger signal, but here too it's easy to see that what you
mean is probably semantically pretty innocent. Yes, you're
absolutely right in that I have not submitted my "Summa
Prescriptionalia", a treatise on what one should approve
of under all possible situations. But I'm really worried
that what is and what is not my business may not be possible
to rationally define. I see a huge continuum of cases.
However, what is important is what we enshrine into law.

> If your intuitions about when something is "your business" end
> up with you intervening at much the same points as someone who
> intervenes depending on their intuitions as to whether something
> is, as you put it, BAD, then what have you accomplished?

Oh, a great deal has been accomplished! The whole emphasis
on when we should intervene has been changed, and, IMO will
be found to be much more in accordance with practical and
time-tested laws. Firstly, however, I note that your paragraph
mentions nothing about the law---it's as if we are in some
lawless space colonies, and we are only interested in examining
what we *approve* of. But intervention is often an entirely
different matter!

> Even if "Is it my business?" and "Is it BAD?" are different
> intuitions, what is it that makes one more interesting than
> the other?

Simply put, it's all about intervention, as you say.
Specifically, intervening in cases where it is none
of the law's business. For example, were they brought
back to life suddenly, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams
would look at you incredulously were one to suggest
that the government regulate whether you could burn
a flag or a cross on your own premises.

> For me the archetypal example of a communicable moral case for third-party
> intervention is where party A is attempting to kill nonconsenting party B.
> In this case, I will, if I can, intervene to prevent A from killing B.

Next time I'm in south central L.A., I will recall your
advice, but I may more sensibly conclude that in many
cases it's none of my business whether one gang-banger
attacks another. Now an exception to this might arise
if we pass laws making it illegal (shudder) for a
bystander to fail to become involved. But do you have
any examples that sound as though they might trouble me
concerning my "we mind our own business" attitude? I
already discussed Damien's fine example.

> I find your morality strange, Lee, because it seems to me
> inconsistent. Why permit a woman to mutilate her baby, but
> intervene against me to stop me from stopping her?

Oh, I never said that! But I can imagine *a* scenario where
I would intervene. In our family, say, we've had a lengthy
debate with my sister who has presented many long and
rational arguments as to why she should deform her child
when its born. It really is the affair of those of us
living under the same roof and forming our own community
in a sense. Suppose that for whatever reason we are brought
to agree that it's her baby and the rest of us should take
a hike. (Possibly it's even in exchange for her letting me
keep dogs in the back that she considers to be cruel.) In this
case, yes, I would intervene to prevent you from sticking your
nose into our affairs.

> My own argument? I freely admit that a woman mutilating her baby is a
> more complex case than a woman mutilating an actively protesting adult,
> since it involves an attempt to extrapolate forward what the baby would
> want,

I suspect that whenever acting "just for someone's own good,
whether they realize it or not", gets problematical beyond belief.

> and since society has an existing concept of parents being allowed
> to exert control over children (not necessarily a concept I agree with,
> but nonetheless a part of contemporary 21st century morality).

Yes, in these complex matters we do have to partly rely on
tradition, and what appears to have been shown to work.
It's even more difficult across cultural boundaries---some
recent immigrants to the bay area find their cultures at
odds with our laws in cases where I think we have too many
laws.

> But my decision will be based on a moral theory in which
> babies are sentients who may claim my protection, and not
> a parent's property;

Yes, we certainly disagree there

> whether the police side with you, or me, will be determined
> by which moral argument is more successfully communicated
> to third parties.

No. How the laws are written, and hence who the police
will side with, cannot be settled by moral argument.
The far less idealistic approach, which has been shown
to be vastly more workable, has been to observe in what
ways successful societies seem to maximize benefit and
prosperity by having enormous regard for individual
citizen legal rights, and enormous regard for private
property. To be sure, as Hayek explains, we need to
be open to new experiments and ideas, however.

> The same holds for a sentient in a simulation running on a computer you
> suppose yourself to "own". You've gone on record on saying that it is
> "none of your business" what someone does with "their" simulation.

Yes.

> I am just as much against ownership of a simulation as I would be
> against the claim that you "owned" the proteins making up a sentient
> you claimed was your "slave".

Right. Our old argument. And one can see how it comes down
to a difference in how societies of equals should function.
Do you acknowledge the harm of preventing people from running
extremely numerous simulations, and thus granting run time to
perhaps trillions of happy people, because of restrictive laws
and interventions by outsiders? (Of course *I* admit that in
a vanishingly few of these simulations, unspeakable horrors
occur---but that's true in the hell branches of MWI already.)

Lee



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:35:51 MST