In this society, it is generally accepted that tickling is not something that requires consent.
Even more than the Martians want to tickle humans, they want to carry them away to their mothership to experiment on them. Everyone agrees that experimentation on humans requires their consent. Part of the socially accepted foreplay that sometimes leads to humans giving their consent to be experimented on, consists of the martian tickling the human behind the ear.
In this society, it is generally accepted that tickling is not something that requires consent.
So, inflicting a “moderate stinging pain” on humans does not require consent..? Can humans, I don’t know, not let any Martians approach them? slap away the tentacles? wear ear-guards? Can humans inflict pain on Martians at will, too?
This looks either like a two-tier society with humans being rights-restricted or like some unstable construct which, if magically brought into existence, will immediately evolve towards a different, more stable equilibrium.
The issue I see with that parable is that humans are entirely passive. They are just subjects of tickling—they have no voice, no opinions, no preferences. All the discussion is about what’s ethical for (active) Martians to do to (passive) humans.
I definitely see the humans as agents, whose preferences are morally relevant. In fact, the reason this is even ethically ambiguous in the first place, is that humans have a preference not to be tickled by green martians.
The reason humans come across as passive, is that I am specifically asking about the ethics of an action that is generally conducted by the active Martian to the passive human. It is at least theoretically possible that this question can be resolved without considering any ethical dilemmas that the humans face. This does not mean that the humans are not considered as important moral agents, only that their agency is not something that has any impact on the ethics of a choice made my Martians.
If you can think of a reason why having a full map of the ethical agency of the human is necessary to resolve the ethics of the choice faced by the Martian, I would be very interested in hearing it and will update accordingly.
It’s not that you need a “full map of the ethical agency”, it’s that just that your setting precludes any interaction between the Martians and the humans pre-tickling.
I think there is a conflict between you saying “In this society, it is generally accepted that tickling is not something that requires consent” and saying ”… long struggled to come up with a coherent ethical theory that determines whether tickling humans is morally acceptable.”
Not requiring consent (outside of power structures like government and law enforcement) is generally a sign that there are no pressing ethical issues involved. And in reverse, a lot of ethical issues disappear if the parties can freely signal, discuss, and negotiate the rules and terms of interactions.
The simplest answer to your issue is “Ask before tickling”. Another answer is to set up a signaling system where a human can signal that he is open to tickling, does not desire tickling, or is willing to negotiate the terms of tickling. None of that requires an analysis of human ethical dilemmas.
Just allow the involved parties to exchange information pre-action.
Not all activities which displease people require consent. The analogy may be misleading because actual tickling is a physical activity and most physical activities do require consent, but if tickling is an analogy for “hitting on women (possibly in a way that appears creepy)”, then green Martian tickling doesn’t require consent, yet still displeases its recipients.
Furthermore, it makes no sense to say “let’s exchange information to find out if it’s okay to hit on someone in a way that appears creepy”. For one thing, asking if it’s okay to hit on someone is just as creepy as hitting on them. For another, since it’s a learning process, you can’t actually know ahead of time if you’ll be perceived as creepy or not (imagine Martians who gradually change color and the bluish-green ones may not know ahead of time if the humans want to be tickled by them).
Also, note that this is a thought experiment. The point of this comment is not to make a claim about the truth value of the statement “flirting is only effective if there is no explicit consent”, but to explore the ethical consequences of a world in which this is true.
Actually, I think you’re doing the analogy a disservice.
What you want to say is, tickling is how Martians ask for consent.
I.e., Martians ultimately want to get humans onto the mothership for experimentation, and humans actually enjoy being on the mothership (with some Martians, anyways), but in order to do so they have to communicate with the human—and the only way to do that is to tickle their ears with their tentacles (hey, it’s how Martians communicate.) And green Martians have stinging barbs on their tentacles.
So the first act a Martian has to perform is to get consent to tickle the human’s ears with its tentacles—AND THE ONLY WAY IT CAN DO THAT IS BY TICKLING THE HUMAN’S EARS WITH ITS TENTACLES.
I agree with ialdabaoth. Accepting that interpretation, the solution might be: it is OK for a green martian to tickle a human once, but if she signalled displeasure with the initial tickling, repeated tickling is frowned upon and might be considered “tickling harassment” and persecuted by law.
Sure. The point I was trying to make is that, while I see females as agents in real life, in this analogy I am discussing the ethics of a choice that is only made by men. The analogy therefore did not require a fully specified model of females as agents.
There are many true things in the world that I chose not to specify in the analogy. For any of those things, if you give me a specific reason why it is relevant to the choice made by the Green Martians, then it certainly should have been part of the analogy. However, there is no law of nature that says “females should always be fully specified as agents in any analogy”
The point I was trying to make is that, while I see females as agents in real life, in this analogy I am discussing the ethics of a choice that is only made by men.
You don’t succeed in avoiding getting mind killed yourself. You switch for no reason towards real life.
For any of those things, if you give me a specific reason why it is relevant to the choice made by the Green Martians, then it certainly should have been part of the analogy.
General ethical consideration suggest that you only inflict pain on other humans if they consent. A doctor will only operate on a patient if the patient consents, even if the doctor believes that a decision to not consent is bad for the patient given the stated preferences of the patient. Respecting that decision means respecting the agentship of the patient.
That’s even true for decisions such as whether to get vaccinated where herd immunity is a concern. No single person if forced to feel pain by getting vaccinate for the good of the group.
You don’t succeed in avoiding getting mind killed yourself. You switch for no reason towards real life.
Discussing the issue in terms of real life does not itself imply that I’ve been mindkilled (though it may increase the chance that the discussion ends up being subject to mindkill). If you think I have been mindkilled, please show me a specific instance where I used arguments as soldiers, or where I failed to update in response to a properly made argument.
General ethical consideration suggest that you only inflict pain on other humans if they consent.
That is a totally acceptable ethical view that is fully consistent with my parable. At no stage did I assert “Since we only care about Martians, it is acceptable for them to do anything they want to the Earthlings”. Instead, I invited you to have discussion about what actions are ethical and which actions are not ethical. In such a discussion, one of the possible sides you can take is that the Martians should never tickle anyone without consent.
However, the real world implication of this assertion of it is that no man should attempt to interact with women unless they are certain that they are sufficiently high status to avoid seeming creepy.
(Note that I probably shouldn’t have used “stinging pain” as an analogy for creepiness and social awkwardness. This was an overcompensation in order to avoid seeming biased in favor of men).
I would think so. You can’t ask someone if they consent to being hit on. Asking if it’s okay to hit on someone is not very distinguishable from actually hitting on them. And it’s even stupider to ask “please give me your consent to hit on you, and by the way, I’m incompetent at interacting with women”, which is what asking for consent by a green Martian would imply.
You can’t ask someone if they consent to being hit on.
You can. Hitting on someone is not a single action, it’s a process spread out in time. It’s easy (and quite common) to start by “testing the waters” or, as someone said in this thread, waving the tentacles in the general direction. The point is to give the human a chance to signal interest or lack of interest and, if the latter, gracefully withdraw. Of course this doesn’t work by explicitly asking for consent, you have to be at least somewhat clueful in reading signals.
But whatever that process is, there must be a first action, and one cannot ask for consent for that first action, because then asking for consent would come before that first action, and thus it would not be the first action.
Furthermore, the idea that one is giving humans a chance to “signal” consent is rather problematic. Telling Martians that they should give humans the chance to “signal” consent, rather than asking for consent, because asking for consent for rude, and then complaining about Martians not getting clear consent is rather bizarre. Can Martians really blamed for feeling frustrated at the idea that they should prioritize consent, but it’s rude to outright ask for consent? If communication of consent doesn’t occur through explicit statements, but through “signals”, aren’t there going to be Martians who think they’re getting consent when they’re not, and think they’re not when they are? Basically, this system rewards the Martians with the lowest threshold for believing that they have gotten consent.
But whatever that process is, there must be a first action, and one cannot ask for consent for that first action
Correct, but that first action need not be grabbing someone’s face with your tentacles.
Again, tickling/flirting is not a single atomic action. It’s a process which takes time and varies in intensity. It’s fine not to have consent for the first few moves if these moves are harmless.
Can Martians really blamed for feeling frustrated at the idea that they should prioritize consent, but it’s rude to outright ask for consent?
Well, not blamed, but Martians who are feeling frustrated are just not understanding the way this particular kind of social interaction works.
Flirting is the exchange of deliberately ambiguous signals with the twin purposes of evaluating the other party and negotiating next moves. The signals are ambiguous because it is useful for evaluation purposes and because this provides a way to back out if the comfort level turns out to be not high enough.
Some people (more humans than Martians) find flirting deliciously pleasurable. Some people (more Martians than humans) find flirting maddeningly frustrating.
aren’t there going to be Martians who think they’re getting consent when they’re not, and think they’re not when they are?
Yes. So what? Do remember that humans can also be good or bad or incompetent at playing this game.
Basically, this system rewards the Martians with the lowest threshold for believing that they have gotten consent.
No, I don’t think so at all. I think that Martians with “the lowest threshold for believing that they have gotten consent” just get slapped a lot.
Stretching the metaphor: Suppose that many humans respond to having tentacles waved at them (whether or not they touch) by threatening to cut them off.
Suppose that Martians have a response that causes their tentacle-barbs to grow longer and pointier and stingier whenever they perceive a threat to their tentacles.
Under your assumptions being a “regular” Green is an unstable state. Greens will be forced to evolve either into Blues or into superGreens with superstingy extra-long tentacles.
Under your assumptions being a “regular” Green is an unstable state. Greens will be forced to evolve either into Blues or into superGreens with superstingy extra-long tentacles.
This is precisely the actual process that I observe, so there’s +1 for this theory.
The metaphor states that selective pressure strongly favored the tickling impulse. A physiological response that made tickling so much less successful would have been outbred in the ancestral past.
In this society, it is generally accepted that tickling is not something that requires consent.
How is it possible to not know whether or not tickling is moral but know that it doesn’t require consent? That doesn’t make any sense.
The whole idea of consent is that it’s for the space between those actions where you know you can do them to anyone and those actions where you know you aren’t allowed to do them to anyone.
In this society, it is generally accepted that tickling is not something that requires consent.
Even more than the Martians want to tickle humans, they want to carry them away to their mothership to experiment on them. Everyone agrees that experimentation on humans requires their consent. Part of the socially accepted foreplay that sometimes leads to humans giving their consent to be experimented on, consists of the martian tickling the human behind the ear.
So, inflicting a “moderate stinging pain” on humans does not require consent..? Can humans, I don’t know, not let any Martians approach them? slap away the tentacles? wear ear-guards? Can humans inflict pain on Martians at will, too?
This looks either like a two-tier society with humans being rights-restricted or like some unstable construct which, if magically brought into existence, will immediately evolve towards a different, more stable equilibrium.
The issue I see with that parable is that humans are entirely passive. They are just subjects of tickling—they have no voice, no opinions, no preferences. All the discussion is about what’s ethical for (active) Martians to do to (passive) humans.
I definitely see the humans as agents, whose preferences are morally relevant. In fact, the reason this is even ethically ambiguous in the first place, is that humans have a preference not to be tickled by green martians.
The reason humans come across as passive, is that I am specifically asking about the ethics of an action that is generally conducted by the active Martian to the passive human. It is at least theoretically possible that this question can be resolved without considering any ethical dilemmas that the humans face. This does not mean that the humans are not considered as important moral agents, only that their agency is not something that has any impact on the ethics of a choice made my Martians.
If you can think of a reason why having a full map of the ethical agency of the human is necessary to resolve the ethics of the choice faced by the Martian, I would be very interested in hearing it and will update accordingly.
It’s not that you need a “full map of the ethical agency”, it’s that just that your setting precludes any interaction between the Martians and the humans pre-tickling.
I think there is a conflict between you saying “In this society, it is generally accepted that tickling is not something that requires consent” and saying ”… long struggled to come up with a coherent ethical theory that determines whether tickling humans is morally acceptable.”
Not requiring consent (outside of power structures like government and law enforcement) is generally a sign that there are no pressing ethical issues involved. And in reverse, a lot of ethical issues disappear if the parties can freely signal, discuss, and negotiate the rules and terms of interactions.
The simplest answer to your issue is “Ask before tickling”. Another answer is to set up a signaling system where a human can signal that he is open to tickling, does not desire tickling, or is willing to negotiate the terms of tickling. None of that requires an analysis of human ethical dilemmas.
Just allow the involved parties to exchange information pre-action.
Not all activities which displease people require consent. The analogy may be misleading because actual tickling is a physical activity and most physical activities do require consent, but if tickling is an analogy for “hitting on women (possibly in a way that appears creepy)”, then green Martian tickling doesn’t require consent, yet still displeases its recipients.
Furthermore, it makes no sense to say “let’s exchange information to find out if it’s okay to hit on someone in a way that appears creepy”. For one thing, asking if it’s okay to hit on someone is just as creepy as hitting on them. For another, since it’s a learning process, you can’t actually know ahead of time if you’ll be perceived as creepy or not (imagine Martians who gradually change color and the bluish-green ones may not know ahead of time if the humans want to be tickled by them).
Depends on what words you use.
Actually hitting on them depends on what words you use too.
In fact, the distinction between asking to hit on someone and actually doing it is so slim that for many practical purposes it may be nonexistent.
OK. Good point. I am going to specify that in this thought experiment, tickling is only effective if there is no explicit consent.
Edit: See definition of tickling here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/klx/ethics_in_a_feedback_loop_a_parable/b5ft?context=1#b5ft
Also, note that this is a thought experiment. The point of this comment is not to make a claim about the truth value of the statement “flirting is only effective if there is no explicit consent”, but to explore the ethical consequences of a world in which this is true.
Actually, I think you’re doing the analogy a disservice.
What you want to say is, tickling is how Martians ask for consent.
I.e., Martians ultimately want to get humans onto the mothership for experimentation, and humans actually enjoy being on the mothership (with some Martians, anyways), but in order to do so they have to communicate with the human—and the only way to do that is to tickle their ears with their tentacles (hey, it’s how Martians communicate.) And green Martians have stinging barbs on their tentacles.
So the first act a Martian has to perform is to get consent to tickle the human’s ears with its tentacles—AND THE ONLY WAY IT CAN DO THAT IS BY TICKLING THE HUMAN’S EARS WITH ITS TENTACLES.
I agree with ialdabaoth. Accepting that interpretation, the solution might be: it is OK for a green martian to tickle a human once, but if she signalled displeasure with the initial tickling, repeated tickling is frowned upon and might be considered “tickling harassment” and persecuted by law.
Agents make decisions. The moment you ignore decision making and only think in terms of preferences agentship is gone.
Sure. The point I was trying to make is that, while I see females as agents in real life, in this analogy I am discussing the ethics of a choice that is only made by men. The analogy therefore did not require a fully specified model of females as agents.
There are many true things in the world that I chose not to specify in the analogy. For any of those things, if you give me a specific reason why it is relevant to the choice made by the Green Martians, then it certainly should have been part of the analogy. However, there is no law of nature that says “females should always be fully specified as agents in any analogy”
You don’t succeed in avoiding getting mind killed yourself. You switch for no reason towards real life.
General ethical consideration suggest that you only inflict pain on other humans if they consent. A doctor will only operate on a patient if the patient consents, even if the doctor believes that a decision to not consent is bad for the patient given the stated preferences of the patient. Respecting that decision means respecting the agentship of the patient.
That’s even true for decisions such as whether to get vaccinated where herd immunity is a concern. No single person if forced to feel pain by getting vaccinate for the good of the group.
Discussing the issue in terms of real life does not itself imply that I’ve been mindkilled (though it may increase the chance that the discussion ends up being subject to mindkill). If you think I have been mindkilled, please show me a specific instance where I used arguments as soldiers, or where I failed to update in response to a properly made argument.
That is a totally acceptable ethical view that is fully consistent with my parable. At no stage did I assert “Since we only care about Martians, it is acceptable for them to do anything they want to the Earthlings”. Instead, I invited you to have discussion about what actions are ethical and which actions are not ethical. In such a discussion, one of the possible sides you can take is that the Martians should never tickle anyone without consent.
However, the real world implication of this assertion of it is that no man should attempt to interact with women unless they are certain that they are sufficiently high status to avoid seeming creepy.
(Note that I probably shouldn’t have used “stinging pain” as an analogy for creepiness and social awkwardness. This was an overcompensation in order to avoid seeming biased in favor of men).
Does that hold in the real-life situation that this is intended as an analogy for?
I would think so. You can’t ask someone if they consent to being hit on. Asking if it’s okay to hit on someone is not very distinguishable from actually hitting on them. And it’s even stupider to ask “please give me your consent to hit on you, and by the way, I’m incompetent at interacting with women”, which is what asking for consent by a green Martian would imply.
You can. Hitting on someone is not a single action, it’s a process spread out in time. It’s easy (and quite common) to start by “testing the waters” or, as someone said in this thread, waving the tentacles in the general direction. The point is to give the human a chance to signal interest or lack of interest and, if the latter, gracefully withdraw. Of course this doesn’t work by explicitly asking for consent, you have to be at least somewhat clueful in reading signals.
But whatever that process is, there must be a first action, and one cannot ask for consent for that first action, because then asking for consent would come before that first action, and thus it would not be the first action.
Furthermore, the idea that one is giving humans a chance to “signal” consent is rather problematic. Telling Martians that they should give humans the chance to “signal” consent, rather than asking for consent, because asking for consent for rude, and then complaining about Martians not getting clear consent is rather bizarre. Can Martians really blamed for feeling frustrated at the idea that they should prioritize consent, but it’s rude to outright ask for consent? If communication of consent doesn’t occur through explicit statements, but through “signals”, aren’t there going to be Martians who think they’re getting consent when they’re not, and think they’re not when they are? Basically, this system rewards the Martians with the lowest threshold for believing that they have gotten consent.
Correct, but that first action need not be grabbing someone’s face with your tentacles.
Again, tickling/flirting is not a single atomic action. It’s a process which takes time and varies in intensity. It’s fine not to have consent for the first few moves if these moves are harmless.
Well, not blamed, but Martians who are feeling frustrated are just not understanding the way this particular kind of social interaction works.
Flirting is the exchange of deliberately ambiguous signals with the twin purposes of evaluating the other party and negotiating next moves. The signals are ambiguous because it is useful for evaluation purposes and because this provides a way to back out if the comfort level turns out to be not high enough.
Some people (more humans than Martians) find flirting deliciously pleasurable. Some people (more Martians than humans) find flirting maddeningly frustrating.
Yes. So what? Do remember that humans can also be good or bad or incompetent at playing this game.
No, I don’t think so at all. I think that Martians with “the lowest threshold for believing that they have gotten consent” just get slapped a lot.
Stretching the metaphor: Suppose that many humans respond to having tentacles waved at them (whether or not they touch) by threatening to cut them off.
Suppose that Martians have a response that causes their tentacle-barbs to grow longer and pointier and stingier whenever they perceive a threat to their tentacles.
Where does this process lead?
Under your assumptions being a “regular” Green is an unstable state. Greens will be forced to evolve either into Blues or into superGreens with superstingy extra-long tentacles.
This is precisely the actual process that I observe, so there’s +1 for this theory.
The metaphor states that selective pressure strongly favored the tickling impulse. A physiological response that made tickling so much less successful would have been outbred in the ancestral past.
How is it possible to not know whether or not tickling is moral but know that it doesn’t require consent? That doesn’t make any sense.
The whole idea of consent is that it’s for the space between those actions where you know you can do them to anyone and those actions where you know you aren’t allowed to do them to anyone.
‘mothership’ sounds a little Freudian in this context.