(this is not too political, I hope: just general talk about social attitudes)
I think I don’t understand much of social-conservative sentiment—not policy suggestions, but the general thurst of it. For example, people who exhibit it often use the term “permissive” as somewhat of a perjorative for several of today’s societies. I don’t get it: “permissive” towards what—stuff like drug use? But they don’t typically use any qualifiers; they just seemingly say that not erring on the side of banning any slightly controversial thing is automatically bad! If you’re arguing from a rationalist and pragmatic standpoint, shouldn’t you accept that the burden of proof is on you if you want to forbid or restrict something? I might, in theory, agree with every concrete example of behavior someone thinks should be restricted, but that doesn’t make people who are OK with those behaviors “too permissive”—it just means that we have diverging views on concrete matters!
(Am I speaking clearly enough?)
Social conservatism has a very healthy respect for the concept of a slippery slope, which in and of itself is just fine from an epistemic point of view. The idea that social issues themselves are one unified slippery slope, though, is crucial to US-like social conservatism.
The idea of social issues being one unified slippery slope may or may not be true. (Unlikely. p<0.1, I think.) It is definitely informed by contemporary religious organizations, though.
Social conservatism has a very healthy respect for the concept of a slippery slope, which in and of itself is just fine from an epistemic point of view.
I understand and mostly agree; e.g. in the last infanticide thread, I went so far as to suggest that I’d bite the other bullet and consider banning abortion when technology blurs the line between pregnancy and birth even more. Yeah, that would bring real disutility to people, and banning post-birth infanticide in itself is already bringing some, but I hate the idea of putting up with infanticide enough that I’d rather have it this way. [1] Here I’m definitely with mainstream conservatives, as their objection to it is stronger and more principled than that of mainstream liberalism.
On the other hand, I think that e.g. any possible slippery-slope threats that could result from recognizing homosexual civil unions as completely equal to “traditional” ones [2] is vastly outweighed by the huge social good it’d create, both as direct utility to homosexual couples and as an improvement in moral climate and the destruction of obsolete in-group boundaries within larger society. It is in such cases that social conservative positions appear to go from defensible to utter crap in my eyes. But, as I already said, I’m inconsistent and biased by nature, and I’m OK with that.
[1] (save for excruciating and incurable afflictions—in which cases, as rumour has it, medical authorities already seem reluctant to investigate, accepting that euthanasia is the least evil solution)
[2] Religious and other private organizations should be free to restrict their “Traditional/Christian/Straight/whatever-they-want Marriage” contracts and rites to any group they want, IMO; it’s just that we need a clear distinction between that and government-recognized legal union. I mean, such privately sanctified marriage shouldn’t have any legal significance; people would still need a civil union in addition to it if they want to enjoy the legal benefits. Also, ending the meaningless connection between such a civil union and sex, child-raising, etc would bring interesting opportunities, such as allowing any number of participants to enter one, or maybe having one signed between relatives.
When your opinion depends on long-term consequences of X or Y, different models of the world can lead to very different models of the future.
One possible chain of thoughts: by recognizing homosexual civil unions as equal to traditional ones, at the cost of small change in definition, people will become equal.
Other possible chain of thoughts: any successful redefinition of marriage will lead to more and more redefintions, until the whole topic becomes completely arbitrary, meaning nothing more than “two (or more) people at given moment decide to call themselves partners, but can change their minds at any moment”. As a consequence there will be less stable marriages. As a consequence, children will on average grow up in worse condition, and that will have massive negative impact on the following generations. (Your solution of separating religious marriage vs civil union would only limit this impact to a part of population; but still, a negative impact on their children, causing e.g. higher crime rate of the next generation, would influence everyone’s quality of life.)
I’ve read that particular argument a million times, and haven’t been impressed. Even Konkvistador, of all people, has objected to that. (I don’t wish to imply that he’s somehow hidebound or inimical to progress, I just find him very reasonably cautious in all matters—not to sound like a sycophant.) I remember him trying to convince Alicorn that formal matrimonal arrangements are more or less pointless because people can have stable and loving relationships outside of a formal marriage.
Indeed, I’m totally unconvinced that most people are so irresponsible that they need formal shackles to provide a healthy and stable environment for their children, and are incapable of having a stable relationship of their own volition and without oversight. And if they are that irresponsible, they probably shouldn’t have children yet.
It seems worth saying out loud that VB was not making the argument you aren’t impressed by, he was referring to it, as are you. Not that you said he was making it, but it’s a volatile enough subject that it’s easy for people to infer conflicts.
With respect to actual content: it’s often useful to make commitments to behave in certain ways.
People do this with respect to fitness goals, employment, cleaning their houses, finishing personal projects… all kinds of things. Sometimes it’s even useful for me to formalize those commitments and agree to suffer penalties if I violate them. This not only signals my commitment to others in ways that are costly to fake, but it creates different incentive structures for myself.
For example, if I want to do twenty pushups three times a week but I don’t seem able to motivate myself to actually do them, I might agree with a friend that once a week they will ask me if I’ve done twenty pushups three times that week, and if I haven’t I will give them $20. That might give me more motivation to do those pushups. (Or it might not… it depends on me, and how much I value $20, and how much I negatively value lying to my friend, and all kinds of other stuff.)
Marriage seems like precisely this sort of formal precommitment to me, and seems potentially valuable on that basis.
I disagree that being the sort of person whose behavior is changed due to such a formal precommitment means I’m too irresponsible to have children. Indeed, knowing what techniques serve to motivate me and being willing to use those techniques to achieve my desired goals seems pretty responsible to me.
I disagree still more with the connotative implications of words like “shackles,” “incapable of having a stable relationship,” or “their own volition”
But I”m only making these negative connotations because it feels to me that my equality and the legality of my hypothetical union with a man are at stake here. Consequently I’m not inlcined to think highly of anyone who gets in the way ;)
Sure, I understand your reasons for it. Speaking as a married man who is currently livid over the fact that filling out my taxes in the U.S. requires telling the federal government I’m single because it refuses to acknowledge that I’m married, I have reasons of my own. We are of course free to think whatever we wish of anyone we wish, but what conclusions we’re justified in coming to is a whole different matter.
(this is not too political, I hope: just general talk about social attitudes)
I think I don’t understand much of social-conservative sentiment—not policy suggestions, but the general thurst of it.
For example, people who exhibit it often use the term “permissive” as somewhat of a perjorative for several of today’s societies. I don’t get it: “permissive” towards what—stuff like drug use? But they don’t typically use any qualifiers; they just seemingly say that not erring on the side of banning any slightly controversial thing is automatically bad! If you’re arguing from a rationalist and pragmatic standpoint, shouldn’t you accept that the burden of proof is on you if you want to forbid or restrict something?
I might, in theory, agree with every concrete example of behavior someone thinks should be restricted, but that doesn’t make people who are OK with those behaviors “too permissive”—it just means that we have diverging views on concrete matters! (Am I speaking clearly enough?)
Social conservatism has a very healthy respect for the concept of a slippery slope, which in and of itself is just fine from an epistemic point of view. The idea that social issues themselves are one unified slippery slope, though, is crucial to US-like social conservatism.
The idea of social issues being one unified slippery slope may or may not be true. (Unlikely. p<0.1, I think.) It is definitely informed by contemporary religious organizations, though.
I understand and mostly agree; e.g. in the last infanticide thread, I went so far as to suggest that I’d bite the other bullet and consider banning abortion when technology blurs the line between pregnancy and birth even more. Yeah, that would bring real disutility to people, and banning post-birth infanticide in itself is already bringing some, but I hate the idea of putting up with infanticide enough that I’d rather have it this way. [1] Here I’m definitely with mainstream conservatives, as their objection to it is stronger and more principled than that of mainstream liberalism.
On the other hand, I think that e.g. any possible slippery-slope threats that could result from recognizing homosexual civil unions as completely equal to “traditional” ones [2] is vastly outweighed by the huge social good it’d create, both as direct utility to homosexual couples and as an improvement in moral climate and the destruction of obsolete in-group boundaries within larger society. It is in such cases that social conservative positions appear to go from defensible to utter crap in my eyes. But, as I already said, I’m inconsistent and biased by nature, and I’m OK with that.
[1] (save for excruciating and incurable afflictions—in which cases, as rumour has it, medical authorities already seem reluctant to investigate, accepting that euthanasia is the least evil solution)
[2] Religious and other private organizations should be free to restrict their “Traditional/Christian/Straight/whatever-they-want Marriage” contracts and rites to any group they want, IMO; it’s just that we need a clear distinction between that and government-recognized legal union. I mean, such privately sanctified marriage shouldn’t have any legal significance; people would still need a civil union in addition to it if they want to enjoy the legal benefits.
Also, ending the meaningless connection between such a civil union and sex, child-raising, etc would bring interesting opportunities, such as allowing any number of participants to enter one, or maybe having one signed between relatives.
When your opinion depends on long-term consequences of X or Y, different models of the world can lead to very different models of the future.
One possible chain of thoughts: by recognizing homosexual civil unions as equal to traditional ones, at the cost of small change in definition, people will become equal.
Other possible chain of thoughts: any successful redefinition of marriage will lead to more and more redefintions, until the whole topic becomes completely arbitrary, meaning nothing more than “two (or more) people at given moment decide to call themselves partners, but can change their minds at any moment”. As a consequence there will be less stable marriages. As a consequence, children will on average grow up in worse condition, and that will have massive negative impact on the following generations. (Your solution of separating religious marriage vs civil union would only limit this impact to a part of population; but still, a negative impact on their children, causing e.g. higher crime rate of the next generation, would influence everyone’s quality of life.)
I’ve read that particular argument a million times, and haven’t been impressed. Even Konkvistador, of all people, has objected to that. (I don’t wish to imply that he’s somehow hidebound or inimical to progress, I just find him very reasonably cautious in all matters—not to sound like a sycophant.) I remember him trying to convince Alicorn that formal matrimonal arrangements are more or less pointless because people can have stable and loving relationships outside of a formal marriage.
Indeed, I’m totally unconvinced that most people are so irresponsible that they need formal shackles to provide a healthy and stable environment for their children, and are incapable of having a stable relationship of their own volition and without oversight. And if they are that irresponsible, they probably shouldn’t have children yet.
It seems worth saying out loud that VB was not making the argument you aren’t impressed by, he was referring to it, as are you. Not that you said he was making it, but it’s a volatile enough subject that it’s easy for people to infer conflicts.
With respect to actual content: it’s often useful to make commitments to behave in certain ways.
People do this with respect to fitness goals, employment, cleaning their houses, finishing personal projects… all kinds of things. Sometimes it’s even useful for me to formalize those commitments and agree to suffer penalties if I violate them. This not only signals my commitment to others in ways that are costly to fake, but it creates different incentive structures for myself.
For example, if I want to do twenty pushups three times a week but I don’t seem able to motivate myself to actually do them, I might agree with a friend that once a week they will ask me if I’ve done twenty pushups three times that week, and if I haven’t I will give them $20. That might give me more motivation to do those pushups. (Or it might not… it depends on me, and how much I value $20, and how much I negatively value lying to my friend, and all kinds of other stuff.)
Marriage seems like precisely this sort of formal precommitment to me, and seems potentially valuable on that basis.
I disagree that being the sort of person whose behavior is changed due to such a formal precommitment means I’m too irresponsible to have children. Indeed, knowing what techniques serve to motivate me and being willing to use those techniques to achieve my desired goals seems pretty responsible to me.
I disagree still more with the connotative implications of words like “shackles,” “incapable of having a stable relationship,” or “their own volition”
But I”m only making these negative connotations because it feels to me that my equality and the legality of my hypothetical union with a man are at stake here. Consequently I’m not inlcined to think highly of anyone who gets in the way ;)
Sure, I understand your reasons for it. Speaking as a married man who is currently livid over the fact that filling out my taxes in the U.S. requires telling the federal government I’m single because it refuses to acknowledge that I’m married, I have reasons of my own. We are of course free to think whatever we wish of anyone we wish, but what conclusions we’re justified in coming to is a whole different matter.
You’re missing a [1].
Oops. Thanks.
I suspect given the context the intention was for footnote 1 to go right ater “I’d rather have it this way.”