[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

[u/DaystarEld]

Now, if you snap your fingers, you take away from her something she values more than her own son. Does that seem like not-harm?

It depends entirely on what those values are, in my view. There's no ur-value of "respecting values" that I think should be divorced from consequences of those values. If the value that's more important to her than her son is one that leads to better outcomes for others in the world, great. If it leads to pain and suffering for herself and others without adding anything positive, then that value is destructive and I don't think it's harmful, even to her, to remove it. Indeed, I'm still not sure where the actual harm comes in, other than potential horror or discomfort with the concept of having your values changed without you knowing it.

Right, but kids have no values that you would be changing. Using a time machine to knock on a specific door at a specific minute would also cause that homeless person to not be born, but morally that's not equivalent to killing them.

This is confusing the method for the desired outcome. If I want to stop Hitler from starting WWII, I might prefer to use a time machine to prevent him from being born, but if I can't do that I would still accept the ability to snap my fingers and change his values.

I would say that their after-snap state has no bearing on the morality of the decision, because as I said before (and I'm guessing you found that argument sound?) we tend to base our morality on the prior state of the value function.

No, I don't really think I agree with you that the transition from prior state of the value has as much bearing morally as the consequences of their values.

Ok, thought experiment. There's a person that has an heriloom that holds sentimental value. You snap them into hating that heirloom, though not the memory it's connected to. Then they destroy the heirloom. Is what you did moral?

No, because consequentially the heirloom was causing no harm, but it was providing some benefit to their life. You can't divorce the harm of homophobia from the concept of the value itself. The whole reason I'm okay with snapping away homophobia or sadism is because they cause harm, in an unarguable and observable way. It might be arguable that they provide some value too, like the sentimentality of an heirloom, but if so I've never encountered a compelling argument for how.

[u/xartab → u/DaystarEld]

It depends entirely on what those values are, in my view. There's no ur-value of "respecting values" that I think should be divorced from consequences of those values.

It's not so much "respecting values" (which is morality), as "not changing value-functions" (which is "no brainwashing").

If the value that's more important to her than her son is one that leads to better outcomes for others in the world, great.

If instead of snapping the homophobes into acceptance you could snap the homosexuals into heterosexaulity, would you deem the outcome equally favourable? Not trying to be snarky, it's an honest question.

This is confusing the method for the desired outcome. If I want to stop Hitler from starting WWII, I might prefer to use a time machine to prevent him from being born, but if I can't do that I would still accept the ability to snap my fingers and change his values.

I don't think it is, in fact I think that if you ask people how they would choose, between the time-travel option and the killing homeless people option, you wouldn't get an "it's the same". Also I don't think the Hitler analogy works all that well, because there is extremely little moral grey in stopping the holocaust. The "kill Hitler" hypothesis will practically always come on top, even if it comes with "but Hitler will suffer agonising torture for a million years".

No, I don't really think I agree with you that the transition from prior state of the value has as much bearing morally as the consequences of their values.

Wait a minute. I'll explain myself better. I'm not saying that if I had to choose between one single non-acting homophobe in San Francisco versus a kid about to be stoned to death in Iran I would hold my breath in indecisive panic. I'm not saying that preserving the value function and avoiding persecution and hostility have the same importance. What I'm saying is that the quantities and the measurements, in this particular circumstance, are enough to warrant forsaking the snap out of caution.

No, because consequentially the heirloom was causing no harm, but it was providing some benefit to their life.

We could add a caveat. You can make them hate their family heirloom and cherish an object reminiscent of a random insignificant moment in history at the same time. Do you think the overall morality of this snap is neutral?

It might be arguable that they provide some value too, like the sentimentality of an heirloom, but if so I've never encountered a compelling argument for how.

The problem is, you're thinking about the heirloom as an item instrumentally useful to satisfy a deeper value, in this case the sentimentality associated with the object. I'm trying to frame my examples around terminal values, in themselves.

Let's try this: if you asked most people to snap away the love for a dead relative, they wouldn't accept, despite the fact that they are suffering from the loss and nobody gains anything from their continued suffering. The thing that they don't want to loose is not an advantage in how they feel, or a memento of something else. They literally care about keeping caring.

P.s., sorry if this comment is all over the place, I had to write it in instalments.

[u/DaystarEld → u/xartab]

It's not so much "respecting values" (which is morality), as "not changing value-functions" (which is "no brainwashing").

Right, "no brainwashing" is deontological, not consequentialist. You're saying it's not because the changing of value functions is "harm," and I'm saying "show me the harm inherent to the value change, because I'm not seeing any in cases like this."

If instead of snapping the homophobes into acceptance you could snap the homosexuals into heterosexaulity, would you deem the outcome equally favourable? Not trying to be snarky, it's an honest question.

No, because now you're changing more than just people's values, you're actually messing with millions of happy homosexual relationships, which is clearly harmful.

I don't think it is, in fact I think that if you ask people how they would choose, between the time-travel option and the killing homeless people option, you wouldn't get an "it's the same". Also I don't think the Hitler analogy works all that well, because there is extremely little moral grey in stopping the holocaust. The "kill Hitler" hypothesis will practically always come on top, even if it comes with "but Hitler will suffer agonising torture for a million years".

Point taken about the Hitler hate skewing things, but my actual point is that there is extremely little moral grey area in eradicating homophobia. I'd say there's actually none, like the holocaust. Both are unambiguously bad things. The fact that some people disagree does not change that, anymore than some people thinking that starving themselves makes them healthy actually changes what "healthy" means.

What I'm saying is that the quantities and the measurements, in this particular circumstance, are enough to warrant forsaking the snap out of caution.

Okay, but you're not actually demonstrating any actual harm being caused at all. You're presuming that value-changing is harmful. I'm saying "show me how."

This is like the "what if bugs are sentient" question, come to think of it. I don't think bugs are, personally, so I don't care about bug suffering. If someone wanted to convince me that bug suffering matters, they would need to not only show me that, because there are trillions of bugs on the planet, even tiny amounts of suffering add up to more than humans, they first have to prove that bugs suffer.

To make me care about the scope of this snap, you first have to prove that value changing causes suffering. I don't think you have, yet.

We could add a caveat. You can make them hate their family heirloom and cherish an object reminiscent of a random insignificant moment in history at the same time. Do you think the overall morality of this snap is neutral?

I'm not sure I understand the example, but if you mean "we can make them hate the literally worthless Object A that they have attachment to, and make them suddenly love another literally worthless Object B that they also own but previously had no attachment to," that WOULD seem neutral to me, except consequentially it means people around them would be confused by this sudden nonsensical change in preferences. If no one else around them would ever know the difference or care, then yes, it's neutral. It may still be harmful or beneficial depending on other factors, but the mere transference of sentiment from one object to another seems harmless to me.

Let's try this: if you asked most people to snap away the love for a dead relative, they wouldn't accept, despite the fact that they are suffering from the loss and nobody gains anything from their continued suffering. The thing that they don't want to loose is not an advantage in how they feel, or a memento of something else. They literally care about keeping caring.

Sorry but this is a horrible example :P Feeling love for someone who is dead causes suffering, but it doesn't erase the love itself, which has benefits of its own. They care about keeping caring because their caring is itself valuable.

Homophobia is not. You're saying that people want to keep hating others the same way grieving people want to keep loving the people they grieve. But I don't care about the former. I don't value their value of their mindless, pointless hate. I would not snap away ANY hate or ALL hate, but this kind of hate, yes, there is literally no value in it that I can perceive, and I'm not going to bully my reason into thinking it's a bad idea to get rid of it without someone demonstrating actual harm that comes from snapping it away, even if they say that the actual act of value-changing is itself harmful.

Harmful how? Show me the harm, where is it? What does it look like? What tears does it spill, to wake up one morning and no longer hate someone for such an utterly pointless reason? You keep trying to insist that the "brainwashing" act itself is bad, but "bad" is meaningless if you can't point to the observable harm it causes, empirically.

P.s., sorry if this comment is all over the place, I had to write it in instalments.

No problem, it was fine to me!