Cognitive Illiberalism and the Speech-Conduct Distinction • Hacker News Board

Re: Cognitive Illiberalism and the Speech-Conduct Distinction

#91

Post by hiptobecubic » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 10:32 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #9

karaterobot wrote: post #8

Before making moral evaluations, it's really useful to look at these situations, and try to automatically reverse the "polarity" of the actors involved. If you see people doing something and you think they're on your side, imagine a similar scenario in which people are taking the same actions for a cause you are violently opposed to, or on behalf of a group you find deplorable. And vice versa. This helps reduce the c…

or even simpler, stop being on a side, then you don't have to do mental tricks like "reversing the polarity". you can just see things for the way they are, without personal identity invested in the situation. this is exactly what being independent is.

No it's not. Being independent just means your personal identity isn't "My political party is X." There's still your mental image of yourself and it shapes your opinions ("What would do I think the kind of person I want to be would think about an issue like this?"). This is pretty much inescapable.

Re: Cognitive Illiberalism and the Speech-Conduct Distinction

#92

Post by clairity » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

hiptobecubic wrote: post #91

clairity wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or even simpler, stop being on a side, then you don't have to do mental tricks like "reversing the polarity". you can just see things for the way they are, without personal identity invested in the situation. this is exactly what being independent is.

No it's not. Being independent just means your personal identity isn't "My political party is X." There's still your mental image of yourself and it shapes your opinions ("What would do I think the kind of person I want to be would think about an issue like this?"). This is pretty much inescapable.

we're saying the same thing. you're distinguishing biases formed of life experience that can't be avoided (but can be consciously corrected to some extent), which is implicitly acknowledged. the point was not to pile partisan identification on top to further distort things needlessly, this latter part being a conscious choice we can deliberately avoid.

Re: Cognitive Illiberalism and the Speech-Conduct Distinction

#93

Post by dane-pgp » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 1:04 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #82

dane-pgp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing free (at the point of use) health care, and making sure children don't go hungry, and even providing tax benefits to couples who raise children, are all perfectly constitutional policies that don't encroach on civil liberties. All of those policies can be motivated by a state/federal desire to grow the population. In fact, some people believe that the federal government has a legitimate interest in providin…

All of this assumes that same-sex marriage has some effect on rate of reproduction or population growth, when it doesn't. Notwithstanding the facts that marriage isn't necessary for sexual procreation and that LGBT people can and do procreate, if the primary interest of the state in regards to marriage was to define it in terms of procreation, then the greater concern by far should be heterosexual marriages which don…

> there is a difference between government providing access to services which citizens can choose to avail themselves of, and government legislating reproduction directly.

Yes, and between those two extremes is the more modest approach of the government providing incentives for certain outcomes, while neither mandating nor preventing any particular actions by its citizens.

> the government banning gay marriage in the interest of "producing children,"

I don't know if anyone is suggesting that the government should "ban[] gay marriage", but some people think that the government shouldn't grant extra benefits to same-sex couples who declare themselves married in some ceremony.

As you point out, such a distinction made by a government is a very ineffective way to stimulate the production of children (indirectly through encouraging people into opposite-sex relationships), just as rewarding opposite-sex marriage doesn't guarantee the production of children, but a more rational set of policies (perhaps rewarding couples of any gender combination for cohabiting during the raising of children, whether naturally conceived or adopted) is more complicated to define and balance and integrate into the culture.

In any case, my point is still that governments have a legitimate interest to legislate policies that encourage an increase in the birth rate, even if they haven't found (or aren't even looking for) an optimal way to do that.

Re: Cognitive Illiberalism and the Speech-Conduct Distinction

#94

Post by watwut » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 5:50 AM UTC

clairity wrote: post #88

watwut wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read enough about Frederick Dougles, most of it written by himself. Enough to know that yours "espoused exactly the type of cross-racial and cross-ideological dialogue i'm bringing up here" does not describe his stance at all. He was not merely writing provocatively. He was not provocative in that quote at all. He was trying to radicalize listeners. His distaste toward slaveholders and slavery is clear in his writi…

you're entitled to your opinions, but it's really hard to believe your scholarship on the man when you've misspelled his name like 15 different ways. i'm willing to have my mind changed on who douglass was because i know i'm not an expert on his life, but your points haven't provided a coherent, convincing argument, and especially do not provide a coherent and convincing counterargument to mine. it doesn't even attem…

Basically, you know nothing about him and are willing to make up stuff based on own imagination.

> my basic argument was that douglass tried violence, found it didn't achieve his aims, and decided to use his intelligence and empathy instead, and achieved

This is categorically false. You made that up, because you want it to be true (for mysterious reasons).

I write on mobile, I misspell. But, at least I took some interest in that man. And I did not made up whole life philosophy of man I don't know anything about living in social environment I know even less about.