By “morally important”, I didn’t mean “this is the most important moral issue”, only “something that moral considerations should bear upon”. “Morally charged” might be more accurate.
It’s always going to be “irrational” to punish people, but “super-rational” considerations say that going to disproportionate lengths to punish people makes people less likely to cause trouble. So I admit some of my beliefs here are disproportionate, but I’m okay with that.
But I do think that if gated journals retard the advance of science by, say, 2% (and there’s some reason to think they affect real researchers and not just amateurs), that’s not trivially unimportant.
Of course, if a gated journal article is the only thing between your research and a cure for cancer, you pay them the money.
By “morally important”, I didn’t mean “this is the most important moral issue”, only “something that moral considerations should bear upon”. “Morally charged” might be more accurate.
It’s always going to be “irrational” to punish people, but “super-rational” considerations say that going to disproportionate lengths to punish people makes people less likely to cause trouble. So I admit some of my beliefs here are disproportionate, but I’m okay with that.
But I do think that if gated journals retard the advance of science by, say, 2% (and there’s some reason to think they affect real researchers and not just amateurs), that’s not trivially unimportant.
Of course, if a gated journal article is the only thing between your research and a cure for cancer, you pay them the money.