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And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

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Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#331

Post by pstuart »

rayiner wrote: post #117
jameskilton wrote: post #3

A good article, but missing one very important word: trust. Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing. Said society also finds it incredibly important to remove or nullify those who aren't trustworthy because "a rotten apple spoils the whole bunch ". Trust is hard to earn, and easy to lose, and it only takes one person exploiting the trustwort…

> Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing The phrase "the right thing" is load-bearing, to steal a Claudeism. The Muslim Brotherhood that ran the country before El-Sisi thought they were doing "the right thing." El-Sisi also thought he was doing "the right thing." Egyptians mostly thought El-Sisi was doing “the right thing” during this time…

> To have a functioning civil society, you actually need the opposite of what you're saying. You need a collective general trust that people will follow the rules regardless of what they think is "the right thing."

That implies that there is a collective general trust that when the rules are not the right thing that they can be addressed.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#332

Post by tremon »

altmanaltman wrote: post #269
femto wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest we have to a "neutral rule" is "The Golden Rule": "Treat others as you would like them to treat you." It has a long history, both secular and religious. Pretty well everything flows from it, and if someone is doing "the wrong thing" whilst claiming to obey it then they are probably deluding themself. The rule is suited to enforcement, since if someone does something "wrong", rather than immediately attack…

What if I like to treat myself terrible and hurt myself everyday? It's okay for me to treat others that way? Just because something has a long history (secular or otherwise) doesn't give it any merit by itself. If we need some standard to judge against what is morally acceptable in the case I presented (no this doesn't apply if you like to hurt yourself and others) then you are back to defining a standard which canno…

> What if [..] treat myself [vs] treat others?

There's an obvious asymmetry in your rephrasing. The parents quote says "do unto others as they do unto you", not as you do to yourself. If you treat yourself terrible and hurt yourself, is it okay for others to hurt you too?

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#333

Post by tonymet »

petermcneeley wrote: post #165
tonymet wrote: post #70

no amount of rules will correct for bad people

It is strange how few understand this. Its as they think that what is required is the right structure or set of rules. They probably dont know that most countries have the exact same political structures with radically different outcomes.

“If only we could create a realtime propaganda, command and control system with a user manual that says no bad person should ever use this for ill intent”.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#334

Post by cwmoore »

bombcar wrote: post #85
9x39 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same society, some people personally experience that others are capable of robbery & much worse within days and some learn it within decades, and everything in between. Some may never have to confront this, all within the same city/state/country. We could represent time-to-reality on a number line.

You can turn a low trust society into a high one by just having nothing whatsoever worth anything.

Or, live as a solitary hermit and the average person you encounter is almost exactly like you. But how do you know you can trust them after they’ve isolated you from society?

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#335

Post by philipallstar »

rayiner wrote: post #117
jameskilton wrote: post #3

A good article, but missing one very important word: trust. Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing. Said society also finds it incredibly important to remove or nullify those who aren't trustworthy because "a rotten apple spoils the whole bunch ". Trust is hard to earn, and easy to lose, and it only takes one person exploiting the trustwort…

> Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing The phrase "the right thing" is load-bearing, to steal a Claudeism. The Muslim Brotherhood that ran the country before El-Sisi thought they were doing "the right thing." El-Sisi also thought he was doing "the right thing." Egyptians mostly thought El-Sisi was doing “the right thing” during this time…

> In any society, you're going to have diverse views of "the right thing." To have a functioning civil society, you actually need the opposite of what you're saying. You need a collective general trust that people will follow the rules regardless of what they think is "the right thing."

Only slightly. Multiculturalism explodes it, but it's not so very different amongst people with shared language, history, faith, and heroic stories.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#336

Post by cwmoore »

stirfish wrote: post #91
bombcar wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn a low trust society into a high one by just having nothing whatsoever worth anything.

Maybe. There are a lot of online games where nothing is worth anything, but I don't think those are default high-trust societies. People will log in just to annoy the other players.

Sounds like they trust the game’s anonymity and privacy policies.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#337

Post by dahart »

altmanaltman wrote: post #269
femto wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest we have to a "neutral rule" is "The Golden Rule": "Treat others as you would like them to treat you." It has a long history, both secular and religious. Pretty well everything flows from it, and if someone is doing "the wrong thing" whilst claiming to obey it then they are probably deluding themself. The rule is suited to enforcement, since if someone does something "wrong", rather than immediately attack…

What if I like to treat myself terrible and hurt myself everyday? It's okay for me to treat others that way? Just because something has a long history (secular or otherwise) doesn't give it any merit by itself. If we need some standard to judge against what is morally acceptable in the case I presented (no this doesn't apply if you like to hurt yourself and others) then you are back to defining a standard which canno…

> What if I like to treat myself terrible and hurt myself everyday? It’s okay for me to treat others that way?

No, that’s not what the Golden Rule said. It says to treat people the way you want other people to treat you. How you treat yourself is your own business.

There’s also a certain amount of making reasonable assumptions here. Obviously the intent is to get people to treat each other fair & well, not to set a logic trap and interpret this aphorism literally to mean you should hurt people if you’re okay with being hurt, even when you know other people don’t want to be hurt. Most people don’t want to be hurt. Obviously.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#338

Post by sortoflog »

WalterBright wrote: post #307
sortoflog wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an ideal free market, but do you know of any large economies that actually meet this criteria? Happy customers are optional when you have regulatory capture.

The US for most of its history. Nothing is ideal. The more free market a country is, the more prosperous it is.

> Nothing is ideal

Right, which is why touting oversimplified economic models is likely to be contentious ;) Speaking of which:

> The more free market a country is, the more prosperous it is.

When do you think the US was at its most prosperous? Most would say somewhere in the mid 20th century, which was hardly the least regulated time in its history…

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#339

Post by colinsane »

i've watched Seattle's lightrail add more announcements over the speakers at the station and the train cars starting with "assaulting a train operator is a federal crime", and then that same message translated into 5 other languages, progressing to "as Seattle gears up to host the world's biggest stage [the world cup], remember our city's values and treat everyone with love and kindness ...".

i don't leave my home without earplugs anymore. if there's no opportunity for you as a recipient to put back pressure onto whoever's making the announcements, it seems any broadcast system will just inevitably degrade. they work in smaller situations, like individual buildings and such, but if you really want a message to reach everyone in society, then tell your neighbors: person-to-person remains the only workable structure for that "last mile", so to speak.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#340

Post by lupire »

decimalenough wrote: post #118

> But it is easy to see why some people feel this might open the gateway to messages which, at best, are irrelevant If you're in South Korea, you can expect to get around half a dozen emergency notifications every day . Typical contents include "it's cold, so dress warmly", "roads are icy, so drive carefully", and "Mrs Kim, 79, suffers from dementia and was last seen in Seoul wearing a black coat". You can set your p…

SK government is solving that problem by ending the war with NK
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