What about the ways in which removing some options increases the amount of others?
To use your example,
In a state of total autonomy, there is nothing to stop me from hitting you on the head with a rock whenever I feel like it.
Once people around me give up the option of hitting me on the head with a rock whenever they feel like it, in practical terms that opens up new options for me. Maybe before I needed to wear a helmet to protect my head, now I can go without. More generally, because people aren’t randomly assaulting me, I don’t need to spend time and energy that I otherwise needed to guard against that, and I am free to do things that I wouldn’t realistically have the options for.
I’d guess that you might answer with something like “we’re talking about the technically available options, and you could technically have gone without a helmet or without guarding yourself even before, it just wouldn’t have been a good idea”. But I’m not sure if that’s actually true? E.g. trying to set up a space that people are generally free to enter and where they’ll feel safe from being assaulted wouldn’t necessarily be possible even in the “allowed by the laws of physics” sense, since it’d require the laws of physics themselves to eject anyone who was about to assault someone else. Whereas once people are willing to restrain their behavior, setting up this kind of a space does become compatible with the laws of physics as they are.
I get that it’s coming up, but I’ll reiterate the confusion so that (at “worst”) you have the ability to make sure you answer any parts of it that you want in the next essay.
You say that autonomy is the ability to do anything allowed by physical laws, and then say later that you may add things to this list. It might help to give an example in the footnote if what you mean is something like “Alex cannot choose to take a shuttle to the moon now, but he may if he builds a shuttle first, which has a cost in resources, time, energy, etc”, because it’s otherwise an apparent contradiction.
What about the ways in which removing some options increases the amount of others?
To use your example,
Once people around me give up the option of hitting me on the head with a rock whenever they feel like it, in practical terms that opens up new options for me. Maybe before I needed to wear a helmet to protect my head, now I can go without. More generally, because people aren’t randomly assaulting me, I don’t need to spend time and energy that I otherwise needed to guard against that, and I am free to do things that I wouldn’t realistically have the options for.
I’d guess that you might answer with something like “we’re talking about the technically available options, and you could technically have gone without a helmet or without guarding yourself even before, it just wouldn’t have been a good idea”. But I’m not sure if that’s actually true? E.g. trying to set up a space that people are generally free to enter and where they’ll feel safe from being assaulted wouldn’t necessarily be possible even in the “allowed by the laws of physics” sense, since it’d require the laws of physics themselves to eject anyone who was about to assault someone else. Whereas once people are willing to restrain their behavior, setting up this kind of a space does become compatible with the laws of physics as they are.
That’s the topic of the next essay, yeah; see footnote.
I get that it’s coming up, but I’ll reiterate the confusion so that (at “worst”) you have the ability to make sure you answer any parts of it that you want in the next essay.
You say that autonomy is the ability to do anything allowed by physical laws, and then say later that you may add things to this list. It might help to give an example in the footnote if what you mean is something like “Alex cannot choose to take a shuttle to the moon now, but he may if he builds a shuttle first, which has a cost in resources, time, energy, etc”, because it’s otherwise an apparent contradiction.