The more judicious question, I am coming to realize, isn’t so much “Which of these two Standard Positions should I stand firmly on”.
The more useful question is, why do the positions matter? Why is the discussion currently crystallized around these standard positions important to me, and how should I fluidly allow whatever evidence I can find to move me toward some position, which is rather unlikely (given that the debate has been so long crystallized in this particular way) to be among the standard ones. And I shouldn’t necessarily expect to stay at that position forever, once I have admitted in principle that new evidence, or changes in other beliefs of mine, must commit me to a change in position on that particular issue.
In the death-penalty debate I identify more strongly with the “abolitionist” standard position because I was brought up in an abolitionist country by left-wing parents. That is, I find myself on the opposite end of the spectrum from you. And yet, perhaps we are closer than is apparent at first glance, if we are both of us committed primarily to investigating the questions of values, the questions of fact, and the questions of process that might leave either or both of us, at the end of the inquiry, in a different position than we started from.
Would I revise my “in principle” opposition to the death penalty if, for instance, the means of “execution” were modified to cryonic preservation? Would I then support cryonic preservation as a “punishment” for lesser crimes such as would currently result in lifetime imprisonment?
Would I still oppose the death penalty if we had a Truth Machine? Or if we could press Omega into service to give us a negligible probability of wrongful conviction? Or otherwise rely on a (putatively) impartial means of judgment which didn’t involve fallible humans? Is that even desirable, if it was at all possible?
Would I support the death penalty if I found out it was an effective deterrent, or would I oppose it only if I found that it didn’t deter? Does deterrence matter? Why, or why not?
How does economics enter into such a decision? How much, whatever position I arrive at, should I consider myself obligated to actively try to ensure that the society I live in espouses that position? For what scope of “the society I live in”—how local or global?
Those are topics and questions I encounter in the process of thinking about things other than the death penalty; practically every important topic has repercussions on this one.
There’s an old systems science saying that I think applies to rational discussions about Big Questions such as this one: “you can’t change just one thing”. You can’t decide on just one belief, and as I have argued before, it serves no useful purpose to call an isolated belief “irrational”. It seems more appropriate to examine the processes whereby we adjust networks of beliefs, how thoroughly we propagate evidence and argument among those networks.
There is currently something of a meta-debate on LW regarding how best to reflect this networked structure of adjusting our beliefs based on evidence and reasoning, with approaches such as TakeOnIt competing against more individual debate modeling tools, with LessWrong itself, not so much the blog but perhaps the community and its norms, having some potential to serve as such a process for arbitrating claims.
But all these prior discussions seem to take as a starting point that “you can’t change just one belief”. That’s among the consequences of embracing uncertainty, I think.
Well, even relatively uncontroversial topics have the same entangled-with-your-entire-belief-network quality to them, but (to most people) less power to make you care.
The judicious response to that is to exercise some prudence in the things you choose to care about. If you care too much about things you have little power to influence and could easily be wrong about, you end up “mind-killed”. If you care too little and about too few things except for basic survival, you end up living the kind of life where it makes little difference how rational you are.
The way it’s worked out for me is that I’ve lived through some events which made me feel outraged, and for better or for worse the outrage made me care about some particular topics, and caring about these topics has made me want to be right about them. Not just to associate myself with the majority, or with a set of people I’d pre-determined to be “the right camp to be in”, but to actually be right.
The more judicious question, I am coming to realize, isn’t so much “Which of these two Standard Positions should I stand firmly on”.
The more useful question is, why do the positions matter? Why is the discussion currently crystallized around these standard positions important to me, and how should I fluidly allow whatever evidence I can find to move me toward some position, which is rather unlikely (given that the debate has been so long crystallized in this particular way) to be among the standard ones. And I shouldn’t necessarily expect to stay at that position forever, once I have admitted in principle that new evidence, or changes in other beliefs of mine, must commit me to a change in position on that particular issue.
In the death-penalty debate I identify more strongly with the “abolitionist” standard position because I was brought up in an abolitionist country by left-wing parents. That is, I find myself on the opposite end of the spectrum from you. And yet, perhaps we are closer than is apparent at first glance, if we are both of us committed primarily to investigating the questions of values, the questions of fact, and the questions of process that might leave either or both of us, at the end of the inquiry, in a different position than we started from.
Would I revise my “in principle” opposition to the death penalty if, for instance, the means of “execution” were modified to cryonic preservation? Would I then support cryonic preservation as a “punishment” for lesser crimes such as would currently result in lifetime imprisonment?
Would I still oppose the death penalty if we had a Truth Machine? Or if we could press Omega into service to give us a negligible probability of wrongful conviction? Or otherwise rely on a (putatively) impartial means of judgment which didn’t involve fallible humans? Is that even desirable, if it was at all possible?
Would I support the death penalty if I found out it was an effective deterrent, or would I oppose it only if I found that it didn’t deter? Does deterrence matter? Why, or why not?
How does economics enter into such a decision? How much, whatever position I arrive at, should I consider myself obligated to actively try to ensure that the society I live in espouses that position? For what scope of “the society I live in”—how local or global?
Those are topics and questions I encounter in the process of thinking about things other than the death penalty; practically every important topic has repercussions on this one.
There’s an old systems science saying that I think applies to rational discussions about Big Questions such as this one: “you can’t change just one thing”. You can’t decide on just one belief, and as I have argued before, it serves no useful purpose to call an isolated belief “irrational”. It seems more appropriate to examine the processes whereby we adjust networks of beliefs, how thoroughly we propagate evidence and argument among those networks.
There is currently something of a meta-debate on LW regarding how best to reflect this networked structure of adjusting our beliefs based on evidence and reasoning, with approaches such as TakeOnIt competing against more individual debate modeling tools, with LessWrong itself, not so much the blog but perhaps the community and its norms, having some potential to serve as such a process for arbitrating claims.
But all these prior discussions seem to take as a starting point that “you can’t change just one belief”. That’s among the consequences of embracing uncertainty, I think.
Yeah, that’s why I try to avoid hot topics. Too much work.
Well, even relatively uncontroversial topics have the same entangled-with-your-entire-belief-network quality to them, but (to most people) less power to make you care.
The judicious response to that is to exercise some prudence in the things you choose to care about. If you care too much about things you have little power to influence and could easily be wrong about, you end up “mind-killed”. If you care too little and about too few things except for basic survival, you end up living the kind of life where it makes little difference how rational you are.
The way it’s worked out for me is that I’ve lived through some events which made me feel outraged, and for better or for worse the outrage made me care about some particular topics, and caring about these topics has made me want to be right about them. Not just to associate myself with the majority, or with a set of people I’d pre-determined to be “the right camp to be in”, but to actually be right.