I want to distinguish this mental action from the behaviours that result from it. I’m trying not to make claims directly about who and what should be outwardly praised.
I totally agree that this is an important distinction (it is the distinction the post I linked to is about), and when I talked about Virtue Points in my comment I was meaning the mental action. But mental actions still have effects, which is why the first sentence of my comment isn’t self-contradictory.
On the connection to involuntary suffering, fair enough, but then you shouldn’t call it “Virtue Points”. That already means something else.
Yeah so on the question of the effects of mentally assigning Virtue Points, I think the extent to which the ideas of my post should change behaviour, and whether that change would be good, is unclear. I wrote the post under the assumption that it’s be better for us to have this fairer understanding of how the amount of suffering involved in a task can be drastically different for different people depending on their existing abilities. I feel like it’s important for society to realise this, and I feel like we’ve only partially realised it at the moment. But possibly this isn’t the case, and I need to think about it more. I’m open to the idea that actually the way people currently assign Virtue Points actually shouldn’t be meddled with (which is why my post is more of a ‘starting point for discussion’ than ‘thing I am completely sure about’). I think you’re right to see the effects (rather than the mental action itself) as the thing that is actually important at the end of the day.
On involuntary suffering, having thought about this a bit more, I suppose the phrase ‘something akin to Virtue Points’ does imply that I think ‘Virtue Points’ would be an okay-ish name for the kind of thing I’m pointing to in the case of involuntary suffering, which is not the case. I do agree that Virtue Points is not a good name for that. I was trying to point out in the post that, as a very general statement, I feel like sufferers deserve compensation whether or not the suffering was voluntary.
I totally agree that this is an important distinction (it is the distinction the post I linked to is about), and when I talked about Virtue Points in my comment I was meaning the mental action. But mental actions still have effects, which is why the first sentence of my comment isn’t self-contradictory.
On the connection to involuntary suffering, fair enough, but then you shouldn’t call it “Virtue Points”. That already means something else.
Yeah so on the question of the effects of mentally assigning Virtue Points, I think the extent to which the ideas of my post should change behaviour, and whether that change would be good, is unclear. I wrote the post under the assumption that it’s be better for us to have this fairer understanding of how the amount of suffering involved in a task can be drastically different for different people depending on their existing abilities. I feel like it’s important for society to realise this, and I feel like we’ve only partially realised it at the moment. But possibly this isn’t the case, and I need to think about it more. I’m open to the idea that actually the way people currently assign Virtue Points actually shouldn’t be meddled with (which is why my post is more of a ‘starting point for discussion’ than ‘thing I am completely sure about’). I think you’re right to see the effects (rather than the mental action itself) as the thing that is actually important at the end of the day.
On involuntary suffering, having thought about this a bit more, I suppose the phrase ‘something akin to Virtue Points’ does imply that I think ‘Virtue Points’ would be an okay-ish name for the kind of thing I’m pointing to in the case of involuntary suffering, which is not the case. I do agree that Virtue Points is not a good name for that. I was trying to point out in the post that, as a very general statement, I feel like sufferers deserve compensation whether or not the suffering was voluntary.