From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Jul 28 2003 - 22:54:50 MDT
--- Hal Finney <hal@finney.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure what lesson we can draw from this,
> other than to recognize
> the existence of these two points of view, and to
> try to respect the
> other one even if you don't agree with it. Of
> course, my whole analysis
> here is completely in the Classical mode, and will
> therefore tend to be
> rejected by the Romantics. It's a tough divide to
> bridge.
Not necessarily - especially if the Romantics try to
phrase their arguments in terms the Classicals can
accept and debate, as seems to have happened in this
case.
If I understand the logic correctly - and I'm not
arguing for or against it - the argument is that
merely
debating the "extreme" propositions indicates that we,
as a community, do not as strongly understand the
reasons against certain things treated as "abhorrent",
and therefore our values (and actions spawned by said
values) appear to the outside world to have some
tendency towards those things.
Among the counter-arguments: it is possible to desire
to learn why a thing is bad in order to strengthen
one's personal prejudices against it. Also, assuming
that a given taboo does represent something that
really
is harmful, it is possible to quest for the "true"
evil, as in that which is actually harmful but is a
mere subset of the taboo (though this risks running
into, or even supporting, that part of the taboo which
is harmful - at least, until it is better understood;
this dissolves into a risk/reward scenario where the
risks and rewards are often ill-measured, and assumed
to be wildly different numbers by different parties).
(Please don't use this as an excuse to relaunch into
the debate over these two points of view. I merely
wish to explain and understand them, not debate which
is correct at this time.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jul 28 2003 - 23:02:56 MDT