#pointless bomb-throwing

[jadagul]

My take on the "should we pause AI development" is dominated by my ambient libertarianism, because I really don't expect medium-term AI to matter that much either way.

[jadagul]

Hot take: The dumber and more expansive forms of SJ "boundaries" talk are reskinned Rothbardian libertarianism.

Rothbardianism centers around the idea of the "Non-Aggression Principle", which is that it is unethical to initiate violence or force against another person. This is a basically reasonable sounding principle. And from it, Rothbard deduces the ethical necessity of anarchocapitalism.

But he's palming a very important card here. Pacificm, "never engage in physical aggression of any sort", can be conceptually simple. If your ethical rule is "Don't initiate violence", then you've just moved all your complexity to your definitions of "initiate" and "violence".

So you say "Okay, so if someone attacks me, I can't defend myself against him?" No, because he attacked you and started it. "Okay, so does that mean that if someone breaks into my house I can't defend myself against him?" No, because he initiated violence by breaking into your house, so you're justified in using violence.

"What if I wasn't at home?" Breaking into your house is still an act of violence, so you're justified in responding with violence if you catch him. "What if someone steals from me by lying to me, and cheats me out of a ton of money?" Oh, that's a fradulent transaction, which means that it was actually an act of force, so you're justified in using violence to reclaim your money.

But taxation is clearly an initiation of force, and forbidden by this very clear and simple ethical principle that we all agreed on to begin with.

There are a few problems with the Non-Aggression Principle, but the one I find most interesting is how contentless the short version is. Different people—even different libertarian theorists—will come to different conclusions about what counts as "initiating force". Pollution is a good wedge issue; and I swear I once read a Hans-Herman Hoppe essay where he argued that immigration was an initiation of violence against the citizens of a nation, who own its public lands in common.

But when you ask people what they think of the rule "Don't initiate violence", they fill those blanks in with something that's agreeable to them. It's like a rule that says "Do good and avoid evil". Most people will agree that we should follow that rule. But it's not terribly helpful in resolving disputes about what the good course of action is.

(Another term that sticks out to me here is "fairness". Paul Krugman thinks we should be fair, by taxing the rich heavily to support the poor. Greg Mankiw thinks we should be fair, by not taxing the rich heavily and letting them enjoy the fruits of their labor. This is why I expect any argument that hinges on "fairness" to be deeply unproductive.)

But the SJ community risks doing the same thing with "consent" and "boundaries".

The problem with the idea that all of ethics can be boiled down to respecting is that any rule, or any request, can be expressed as a boundary. This is one of the classic abuser techniques: "Look at how you're hurting me, you need to stop doing this to me".

And with "consent" it's even worse. Who has the right to consent, or not consent, to the thing in question? It's cute to say that the problem with exhibitionism is that you involve people in sex acts without their consent. But that's structurally the same argument as the conservative request that gay people not engage in PDA.

The difference is that we ("we" being [most of] the people reading this blog) think "I don't want to see people boning when I walk down the street" is a reasonable request, and "I don't want to see two dudes holding hands" is not. But you can't avoid those sorts of object-level questions just by appealing to consent. You still have to decide whose consent is needed for which things.

But of course, "you should respect people's boundaries, as long as those boundaries are reasonable and not imposing on you or other people in aggressive or unfair ways" is a much less compelling-sounding rule than "respect people's boundaries". Even though we all know people who try to "establish boundaries" that we consider to themselves be gross boundary violations.

Now, this "critique" of consent and SJ self-care language isn't new either. But I was struck by how similar it is to the non-aggression principle in both its structure (you can't cross certain boundaries) and its vagueness (doesn't at all clarify which boundaries need to be respected). And given how opposed those two camps tend to be in public discourse, I was amused.

[jadagul]

Realized my two Genuinely Offensive opinions are interestingly dual to each other.

In one, I think everyone else sounds cartoonishly evil.

In the other, everyone else thinks I sound cartoonishly evil.

[jadagul]

Trying to figure out what about the phrase "please do your own research" is so grating.

Like, "Hey, I don't want to explain the backstory to why I'm banning these emotes, but please go look it up and you'll understand" doesn't sound bothersome to me at all. But "I don't want to explain it becuase I'm not here to educate you, but please go do your own research" comes off as incredibly obnoxious to me.

I think it's something about the implication that there's some sort objective truth about banworthiness going on? But possibly it's just the falling back on what is essentially a rote signaling phrase.

Or maybe it's just the implication that this is a weighty and complex subject you need to do research on, rather than a two-sentence explanation on Know Your Meme or something.

[jadagul]

In general, my view of American politics is:

The purpose of the political establishment is to maintain the neoliberal policy consensus, and protect it from both populist and popular opposition.

So one important job the Democratic party has is to make sure that genuine leftists are blocked from getting real political power, even if they have popular support.

And one important job the Republican party has is to make sure that right-wing nationalists are blocked from getting real political power, even if they have popular support.

(Obviously, the Democratic party is doing a much better job of this right now. Good for them! That's why I'm consistently voting for Democrats, even though that makes me grumpy.)

But preserving the dominance of the market-based neoliberal consensus is more important than shifts right or left within that frame. So both parties should be willing to sacrifice short-term marignal priorities to preserve that general policy space. The Republicans should have sacrificed the Presidency and wrecked their party rather than let Trump get elected, or even nominated.

And in normal times I'd have said the same thing about Sanders; if the Democrats had hypothetically nominated Sanders to run against a hypothetical President Romney, I would say they should wreck their party rather than let him either become president or build a base of political support within the party. Against Trump, I don't really believe that, because he's so beyond the pale in so many ways. But that's just a sign of how damaged our current political environment is.

[jadagul]

My shittiest philosophy opinion:

There's a consensus among analytic philosophers of ethics that ethical philosophy is coherent, for the same reason there's a consensus among astrologers that astrology works.

[jadagul]

tremorbond replied to your post: Ready to endorse heavy tech regulation if they’ll...

how would a combination of that and right to be forgotten work out anyways

The right to be forgotten is a human rights violation.

The kind of obnoxious and ranty point I was making is that to the extent I’m sympathetic to the desire to regulate tech companies’ information storage mechanisms, I want exactly the opposite of what most people are trying to make happen.

[jadagul]

tremorbond replied to your post: tremorbond replied to your post: Ready to endorse...

so you think if your ex leaks your nudes, it’s a human rights violation to make them less accessible to the internet?

or maybe it’s a human rights violation to stop them from posting them in the first place?

anyway my question was gesturing at maybe some way of finding a solution that’s not totally zero-sum

you can probably get 60% of the way to “your data can’t be destroyed” rules and also 60% of the way to “your data can be destroyed” rules without much conflict

I’ll be honest with you---the revenge porn case is one that I’m really conflicted about, because it’s obviously malicious but I’m really hesitant to put any sort of restraints on speech.  I think I come down on the side of legally restricting revenge porn, but it’s not something I’m comfortable with.

But the right to be forgotten goes a lot farther than that, and requires people to delete publicly available information from public databases, because the information is “inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant or excessive in the light of the time that had elapsed”.  

(The term became widely known when Mario Costeja sued Google to require them to stop sharing the fact that his home had been repossessed due to a tax debt.  It should be perfectly legal to tell everyone that Mario Costeja had his home repossessed due to a tax debt, since it’s true that Mario Costeja had his home repossessed due to a tax debt).

More generally, any time I read anything about European privacy laws, or speech laws generally, I’m pretty horrified.  To a first approximation, no speech should be illegal.

There’s probably some compromise between “your data can’t be destroyed” rules and “your data must be destroyed” rules.  I don’t actually support either; I think the breakdown of the consensus that governments don’t really get to regulate tech companies is dangerous and scary.

But emotionally (and un-endorsedly), I don’t want a law that bans tech companies from deleting my data without my permission.  I want a law that bans people from deleting data.  Destroying data is destructive and evil and gross.  I don’t want it to happen at all.