Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:11 am
Skepdick wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 7:40 pm
But you are still missing the forest for the trees.
The common property amongst any and all situations we deem "erroneous" or "wrong" is that we wish them to have been better/different.
We have a counter-factual idea of how the situation OUGHT to have been. You know that a better outcome is possible. You know that the current outcome is suboptimal.
It seems like you want to focus on one quality: wishing something was different and call this an ought to be that different way we wish something was. Just because these differences share this quality - and I do have questions about the use of ought there - doesn't mean that we can't have two qualitatively different categories that have other differences.
But that isn't "one quality" ?!? That is the totality of all qualities and quantities in existence.
Ceteris paribus that difference you are obsessing about ("the problem") is all that distinguishes the current timeline you find yourself in from the alternative timeline you wish you were in.
If there wasn't this counter-factual timeline (of how the present out to have been). If there's no desired difference - there would be no "problem". No alternative/counter-factual present you wished for.
Every time I hear somebody use the world "problem" I envision two parallel universe. One is the universe we are currently in. One is the universe we want to be in. "The problem" is how to get from the former universe to the latter.
No desire. No problems. No change required.
This is literally what I meant when I said you are missing the forest for the trees. You are reducing everything to properties while I am magnifying everything into alternate universes.
It doesn't matter whether the alternative universe you desire is one where you are sipping a cup of tea or one where cancer has been cured - it's the same principle.
What I am talking about is the process of reification. Making the abstract conrete.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:11 am
If someone is ugly we might think, it is better if they were beautiful. But this doesn't mean that distinguishing between
she was incorrect about the capital of Hungary
she shouldn't talk shit about her friends behind their backs
her eyes are too close together to be considered pretty
(so going after the traditional, truth, goodness, beauty.
To me it's one and the same thing. Whether you are being an ass to a fat girl; or being an ass to 6 million jews - you are still an ass.
It's just a question of magnitude.
If you are being an ass to a fat girl maybe her friends; maybe her big brother might get on your case - if you are being an ass to 6 million jews half the world will be on your case.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:11 am
I think these are different categories. And while we could come up with a way to make a forest out of them, they are distinct.
Yeah... I don't think in categories so I can't relate. Categories only produce tautologies. Nothing useful come sout of thinking that way.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:11 am
That delta between what has come to be and what could have been. That's the common golden thread I am talking about.
Or 'we wish it had been'. Could have been implies free will in the case of actions and some other kind of ontological flexibility in the other two categories that may not exist.
Yeah... no categoriies at play here. Unless you think "current reality", "alternative reality" and the process of reifying the latter are categories of any sort.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:11 am
Aren't you trying to get me to see a more accurate version of reality here?
No - that's a stupid game. Reality is however reality is. I am only asking what it is you want to change about it?
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:11 am
Do you treat all three categories the same in your interactions with people?
I don't think in categories when I interact with people. Everything is the way everything is.
Most of my interaction with people is almost robotic. Pleasantries and niceness. Goofing around. Exchanging experiences. None of that stuff requires any thinking as such. It's all mostly autopilot.
In so far as I engage in any "thinking" I only do it for the purpose of changing something. If I don't want to change anything why do I have to think? Eerything's already the way I want it.
If I don't want to change any minds -(mine; or somebody else's) why bother engaging in deliberation? Everything's already the way I want it.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:11 am
Right but just because two categories share something in common, that doesn't mean they are not separate categories.
I don't even know what that means. Category-membership isn't some sort of fixed thing. Given one and the same bookshelf there's a bunch of different ways to categorize it - by genre, by alphabetic order, by year of publication, entirely at random; or maybe you are weird and you just categorize your books by color. And the thing is you don't even have to actually move the books. You can imagine how you want to sort them and picture which category each book would go into (If you were to go through with the exercise) without actually going through with the exercise.
But to insist that books belong to some inherent category is absurd. The same goes with reality.
So instead of talking about categories (the noun) I am talking about category construction. The selection/admission criteria for whether any given book belongs to category X. And you can evern arbitrarily decide whether therei is or isn't a problem with one book ending up in multiple categories or not.
It doesn't matter - categorisation is all conceptual. You aren't physically putting anything into distinct boxes. Obviously you can't have the same book on two different physical shelves. But you can have it on two conceptual shelves.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
Then why call them Nazis.
Because they are obsessively strict and uncompromising about enforcing norms - like the Nazis were. Like any regimented/miliatarized society is.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
To me that label implies that they have added qualites of the moral realm to the truth realm. In people's reactions to them. And they are clearly breaking social norms in dealing with issues of grammar rules. They treat it as a moral issue, which breaks certainly the norms of the people that label them so.
Nazism is just a mindset. It has nothing to do with morality. Being called a Nazi doesn't imply that you are immoral, but if you do any of the usual shit Nazis do (hate on people) those actions are immoral.
If you stop doing all that harmful shit Nazis do - you are welcome to be a Nazi. Nobody would care.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
Again that's why I chose that example. It's not severity, it's about the attitudes and interpersonal relations and character. Likewise with my wife. Likewise that we do not consider developmentally disabled people in need of punishment. We can think they are grand old people and consider them of good character, but we see to it they don't fly airplanes.
You are being too particular.
I think particulars help see the distinction. Here I was
also specifically arguing against the criterion 'severity.'
[/quote]
I think you missed the point that no distinction is being made on a continuum of severity - a continuum is not a criterion.
On the continuum of numbers all numbers are numbers.
There's such thing as one number being lower or higher than another number, but there's no such thing as a high or low number.
7 isn't low and 54234 isn't high, but 7 is lower than 54234.
in order for you to say that any particular number is "high" or "low" you need to introduce some criterion. Some threshold where the low numbers end and the high numbers begin.
The same goes with severity - I am not introducing a criterion for where low severity ends and high severity starts. I am just saying that murder is higher severity than being an ass to a fat girl.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
Right, here you are giving a particular situation to show equivalence. I do think there are situations where the actions are similar.
These kinds of judgments are not useful
Any two situations/events are different. Except for the similarities.
Any two situations/events are similar. Except for their differences.
This continuum enables infinite disagreement for those willing - such as Philosophers.
Ignore the differences - focus on the similarities and you have Philosophical position A.
Ignore the similarities - focus on the differences and you have Philosophical position B.
Open ended philosophical question: Are X and Y the same or different?
And you have yourself an undecidable philosophical question. Flip a coin - it's as good as any philosophical argument.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
But then there are situations where they are not.
Should I believe you and your criteria; or can I just ask the coin's totally unbiased opinion?
Because the question is really down to a heads or tails - same or different.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
In your example, perhaps some elderly see this as punishment. 'And while I anticipate a potato, potatoe response, I think it actually matters that it is not seen as punishment but rather statistical batching.
How well has that explanation ever worked for you? "Oh! I am just a number to you!"
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
Yes, you may well be someone who can fly at your age, but we cannot invest the time and energy in determining for each individual case.
That's because there's this thing called regression to the mean. Any given 65 year old can perform exceptionally OR poorly on any given test, but test test the same pilot over and over they will regress to the mean.
That's how the law of large numbers works. Exceptionalism is largely a myth.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
But we do not see you as a less moral person. While we might if at 63 with early onset dementia beginning, knowing your diagnosis, you did continue to fly. Because you were still together enough to know that was a bad idea'. You intentionally put us at risk.
It's peculiar to me that you keep making it about the person. Yes people take things personally and knowing this fact we should sugar-coat this shit so it's easier to swallow, but it's not a moral judgment on their character.
It's a pragmatic ethical decision in the interest of passengers.
Any pilot of good judgment might even recuse themselves from the flight deck if they begin to notice they are becoming forgetful.
It's about the quality of the decision. Irrespective of who makes it. The layers of control we have in place are only so that SOMEBODY bloody well makes it!
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
Sure, again, yes, they share this quality, but not others.
That's trivially true of any two situations - it goes without saying.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
It certainly does to most people.
No it doesn't. Are you really telling me that you have stronger aversion to being murdered than you do to dying from a heart attack?
I have strong aversion to dying in general - as far as I am concerned all death is due to natural causes. It's just some causes are more prevalent than others and murder isn't even in the top 20.
So in the statistical sense I am far more worried about medical conditions than I am about violence.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
It does within law.
The law is a posteriori - it has different objectives to the murder victim.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
I think it even matters in the way you react to people posting here - though I could be reaching.
Yes but that's only because my strategy in the discourse depends on the intentions of my interlocutor.
It's game theory 101 stuff. I always want to be in a non-zero-sum cooperative game, but that's not always up to me - sometimes I get dragged into a prisoners' dilemma with an uncharitable/intentional actor. In that context there's only one winning strategy for me - stealing their strategy and dishing it back out.
This sort of reasoning doesn't apply in court of law - there's never a cooperative game to be played there unless you plead guity.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
Well, I think we treat situations categorically differently when intent is involved.
In the moment we are attempting to prevent harm we don't - I am as equally concerned about a pile up on the highway as I am about a man with a gun.
It's immediate danger either way.
A posteriori- sure. But that's about seeking accountability not about preventing harm.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
That's certainly some people's intention with punishment, some not, but they are not the same kinds of situations and we react differently to them.
You react different to murder threat than to other threats to your life?
So peculiar.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
Sure, though we'll treat the situations differently and perhaps radically differently.
I think we are talking about different things here.
There's treating the situation prospectively - as you are approaching it in person; and treating the situation retrospectively as it has already happened.
In the prospective treatment - there's no difference. Whether you are trying to murder me or drive into me your intentions don't matter - the consequences of your actions matter.
In the retrospective treatment - sure. There's no blame assigned your way so we treat you different to a murderer, but in so far as we still want to prevent accidental deaths we treat the situation exaxtly the same as any other accident. We examine learn see if any mechanism of control could've worked.
Blame is only ever useful when it turns out that the simplest and most effective measure of control would've been you simply making a better choice. If you had no control to make a better choice - you can't be blamed.
ItS All AboUt ConTRoL !!! (lame attempt at spooky text)
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
I think in both categories we consider overall evaluations, not just individual cases. The kids who do less well at math. The kids who bully.
Yeah but we have this tendency to make relative assessments (jane is worse than joe at maths) into absolute statements "Jane is bad at maths".
These two judgments are not made using the same yardstick and we owe ourselves some honesty in admitting that.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
We look at overall patterns. To me there is a categorical difference between saying my wife makes more mistakes now and this entails she is less moral. I think the first is obviously true and I can demonstrate this to pretty much anyone. IOW that is closer to science. I don't think it makes sense to say she is less moral.
Yeah then don't say such things
Hummans have spent millenia chasing ghosts. Seeking the "Evil gene" - the intrinsic thing that makes us bad people. They aren't gonna find it because there's no such thing.
But it's so much easier to use a thought-terminating cliche like "They are just evil" when we can't be bothered to understand how somebody could do something attrocious. They don't see themselves as the sort of people possible of such things if they had simply found themselves in different circumstances. I think in psychology they call this phenomenon splitting.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
I don't think it's binary, but I certainly do put people on different places on the spectrum and deal with them differently. I find this very useful.
Sure. Reputation/history/past behaviour is a thing.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:10 pm
I see trends and countertrends and I have my fingers crossed, but am less optimistic than you are.
I mean if you want to be categorical... any amount of optimism is optimism.