@ttpphd I wonder in which paradoxal state of mind are left the doctor who perform medically needed abortion (like extra uterine pregnancy) They should be proud to save a life but also devastated to abort one, no ? #Drug #TheirBodiesTheirRights #Abortion #Autonomy #Patriarchy #Feminism #MedMastodon #Paternalism

Harry Frankfurt, 1929-2023. He'll be missed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/books/harry-g-frankfurt-dead.html

I admire _On Bullshit_ but haven't haven't written anything citing it. (That may change soon.)

But I have cited him on first- and second-order desires, for example in this 2001 article on the ethics of paternalizing #AI programs that want to reprogram themselves:

Saving Machines From Themselves: The Ethics of Deep Self-Modification
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/32986888

#RIP #Freedom #Paternalism #Philosophy
@philosophy

Great introduction to our special issue on COVID19 Collective Irrationalities by Kengo Miyazono and Rie Iizuka #OpenAccess https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09515089.2023.2221929 #paternalism #VaccineHesitancy #ConspiracyTheories #nudges #irrationality #bias @philosophyofmind @epistemology @philosophy @psychology

I hate Chesterton's Fence.

It's a perfect encapsulation of the philosophical basis for all conservative arguments everywhere, from #jordanbpeterson and your average internet conservative to #Hayek's arguments in Law, Legislation, and Liberty. And it's a perfect encapsulation of all of the unique flaws, fallacies, specious reasoning, and presumptive #paternalism of #conservative thought.

Chesterton's Fence, and by extension all these other conservative arguments, make roughly speaking one fundamental point: whatever is traditional in institutions and culture must be beneficial, because it has "stood the test of time," and must have been put there (or developed) for a reason. So we should pretty much avoid change (they usually give the impression of being conceptually open to change, but when you look at their reasoning it fundamentally MUST shut down all change at all) because while the traditions that have existed for so long must be beneficial — else they wouldn't have developed and then survived so long — and have a proven track record, anything new we do has no such track record, and so could be disastrous and dysfunctional, and we would have no way of knowing.

This is the argument underneath Peterson hemming and hawing about how "we don't know the rules yet, we don't know all of the effects" of women being in the workplace, for instance, when anyone brings up workplace harassment, why he insinuates that the problem is women being there (or being too immodest) in the first place.

The problem with this argument is several fold. First let's deal with the whole "if it stood the test of time, it must be beneficial."

They argue that if a tradition is old and yet still common today, then it must have guided the people who followed it well in order to survive so long, engaging in a kind of natural selection of ideas. What they forget is that natural selection is not teleology, it's machine learning. If ideas develop according to evolutionary dynamics, ideas can also fall prey to suboptimal equilibria and all sorts of other evolutionary weirdness and badness.

Moreover, the success of an idea is not directly related to how good the idea actually is for the people that follow it at all. An idea can leap from head to head, abandoning hosts, and it doesn't actually care about us, so its evolutionary function is a parasite, a virus. It only needs its hosts to survive long enough to spread — as long as it isn't bad enough to kill off all its followers, it can spread by many other means than being better to live with. Maybe it's better at spreading, through appealing to our baser natures or cognitive biases, maybe it's good at locking itself in through thought stopping cliches and fear of reprisal and stuff like Pascal's Wager/Roko's Basilisk. Or maybe it's really good at setting up interlocking peer pressure and network effects and social enforcement of continuing to believe it. Or maybe it's better at suppressing other ideas. Or maybe it's better at creating a group geared toward conquest or evangelism, but actually living under it sucks otherwise. Maybe it's just really beneficial to a small group of people in power and so they work really hard to spread it and are successful for other reasons. Maybe it's a fluke of history, there are so many of those and the butterfly effect is real (what if Christianity hadn't become the official Roman religion?).

Not to mention, ideas only have to compete against the ideas that were actually contemporary with it in history and were strong enough to create evolutionary pressure, so if a new idea comes along about how to organize society or whatever, we don't actually know if it will automatically win out just because it won out against other different ideas in the past. What would we think an idea is unimprovable or optimal just because it is old? The long term existence and popularity of an idea or tradition doesn't necessarily make it good at all. Would you say that the Bible's injunctions against e.g. divorce or homosexuality or women being able to teach and hold positions of authority are encoded wisdom? (Maybe they would.)

The second problem is that it assumes that the current system is *largely fine*, that there aren't any significant, weighty problems with it to motivate change, that people just want change for change's sake. But that's not true. They worry so much about the possible unknown dysfunctions of new ideas and ignore those of the older traditions, which manifestly have horrible dysfunctions and consequences for a lot of people in a lot of areas. People suffer death, poverty, homelessness, bigotry, injustice, lack of autonomy every day under current systems, and it was far worse (if more well hidden) in the sort of "traditional" world conservatives pine for. The possible unknown bad outcomes that may result from change are worth it to actually try to improve this fucked up system, these traditions that we KNOW are deeply harmful and function in all these horrible ways, many of them intentional. Why would we way a possible, unknown, unproven bad outcome more heavily than real concrete present suffering? Something matters LESS the more uncertain it is, so isn't it basic decision theory to try to fix the problems we see right in front of our eyes instead of spending all our time cowering before the visage of an unknown future? But conservatives get around this point by making the stakes of every cultural and institutional change wholesale civilizational destruction. They tell us that any change we make could cause our entire civilization to crumble, that we won't have time to try things and undo them if they don't work, or to learn how to live in the future we've created. That's how they overcome the fact that the bad outcomes they claim change may bring are nebulous, uncertain, unproven, unlikely — by ramping up the possible consequences to such a grand scale that just the sheer *conceptual* possibility that because we don't know the outcomes of a change it might conceivably somehow lead to civilizational collapse forces us to turn away from any change at all. But are the stakes of every cultural change actually civilization collapse? Even if they can cause it, is it likely enough to actually worry about enough to ignore the real suffering and injustice we see around us and want to fix? No. Until there is actual evidence that a change will or even could have such terrible co sequences, actually solid reasoning or sociology or historical points, there's no reason to think in such a hyperbolic way. It's just catastrophizing to manipulate people, because the only way to get possible unknown unlikely horrible results from benign changes to outweigh real suffering and injustice is to cast it in such stark terms. But we can look at the nature of the changes we are making and predict what the consequences will be, and that won't be perfect, but it can guide us away from that thinking. But they want us to view every change as having a real, substantial, imminent chance of destroying everything, and to simultaneously ignore the dysfunctions caused by tradition, so we never decide the risks are worth it to make society better.

Finally, the last problem with Chesterton's Fence: the assumption that the person who wants change, wants to undo some tradition, doesn't understand why the tradition is there, what purpose it serves, what effects it has. They have to assume that to explain to themselves why people want to upend traditions, because truly accepting the alternative — that we actually do understand the nature of what we are changing deeply, but sometimes even because of that think they must be changed — would be to admit to themselves they might be wrong. And yet, we manifestly DO understand what we are trying to change, often far better than those who are trying to prevent the change. This kind of thing can be seen with the conflict over "wokism" and Critical Race Theory and the statues; it is the progressives who have investigated deeply into the things they want to change, come to a rich and complex and penetrating understanding of the reasons why these traditions are in place, how they were put there, what functions they serve, and what effects they have, and it is the people fighting to keep these traditions in place that simply don't understand anything about the what they're defending and are fighting to keep people ignorant. So in reality it is the progressive that could say to the conservative what Chesterton says: "go away and consider why this might be here and what purpose it might serve and only when you have considered that long and hard come back to me."

So yes here in this argument we find in calculated all of the primary features of conservatism:

- the belief that antiquity grants traditions legitimacy and goodness through a blindness to the complex workings of actual history, how societies and ideas actually gain power and spread, in favor of a sort of abstracted ideological narrative about how history works
- the dread of the unknown, the future, out of all proportion or evidence, and blindness to present suffering
- a paternalistic, patronizing assumption that their opponents must be ignorant teenage children blindly revelling against authorities for no reason, while they themselves are the ones ignorant of the details and nuances of actual history in favor of their abstract ideological narrative of history

Black market for mustard in Bogotá #EconTwitter #blackmarket #food #paternalism #repugnance
http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2023/06/black-market-for-mustard-in-bogota.html

Optimal #Paternalism in a Population with Bounded Rationality
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31349/w31349.pdf
"…detailed empirical knowledge of population distributions of preferences and #BoundedRationality is rare. Hence, we express caution against premature implementation of policies that attempt to ameliorate bounded rationality by constraining or influencing choice behavior. In the absence of firm empirical understanding of population behavior, such policies may do more harm than good."

@GreenFire #paternalism and sheer vrutality are the only two things that keep #KSA stable...

Otherwise the people would've guillotined the 5000+ strong nobility + theocratic leaders ages ago...

In our special issue on collective irrationalities Rory Aird discusses the puzzle of epistemic #paternalism: although it may be a solution, it cannot be used without risks https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2022.2146490 #OpenAccess @philosophy

New York doesn't ban Menthol cigarettes, amid controversy #EconTwitter #blackmarket #drugs #law #nicotine #paternalism #repugnance
http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2023/05/new-york-doesnt-ban-menthol-cigarettes.html

@noplasticshower
No — it was my 2001 article on whether to paternalize machines that want to reprogram themselves.
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/32986888/Peter%20Suber%2c%20_Saving%20Machines%20From%20Themselves_.pdf

#AI #SelfModification #Paternalism

"I do, in fact, think that I deserve a cookie for not immediately laying into every “leftist” committed to doing thought experiments about the existence and rights of sex workers and their place in a “post-revolution” world. It’s exhausting to constantly defend your agency, autonomy, and expertise on your own needs to people that profess to be on your side as comrades in the classed hell that is capitalism."

https://tryst.link/blog/paternalism-prostitution-and-paying-for-it-on-the-left/

#SexWorkersRight #SexWorkIsWork #paternalism #BodilyAutonomy

"…improper to consider Adam Smith a behavioral economist, given his staunch defense of a limited government, & his criticism of the “man of the system” who wants to arrange the lives of people as if the latter were pieces in a chessboard"
https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/adam-smith-as-behavioral-economist
I oppose this characterization of #BehavioralEconomics. It's not about government intervention & #paternalism. It's about understanding #BoundedRationality, #DecisionMaking within the limits of our cognitive resources, knowledge, & time.

Pakottamisesta en hentomieli saanut oikein otetta, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/coercion/, vaikka sovelluksissa olisi ollut kiintoisaa, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/coercion/applications.html. Aikaisemmista aterioista paternalismi, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paternalism/, ja etenkin juuriltaankin tuoreempi manipuloinnin etiikka, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-manipulation/, sopivat paremmin ravinnon tarpeisiini. Jälkimmäinen entry liittyy mm. suostumus-teemaan. Harmillisesti muistijälkeni ovat lähes haihtuneet, enkä nyt kertaa.

#paternalism #manipulation #ethics #consent

@terrigivens I really love the discussion you've initiated about how people conflate #allyship with #paternalism

I'm curious to learn about any strategies you've named to address and repair that rupture

Definitely going to have to check out your book #RadicalEmpathy

https://www.terrigivens.com/radicalempathy/

Free to choose or free to lose? Understanding individual attitudes toward #paternalism https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2022.39
…investigates attitudes toward paternalistic policies & who supports them.
…finds people targeted by such policies tend to oppose them, & the values of #choice and #freedom play a key role.
…some evidence for non-targets supporting such policies for#altruistic reasons.
…shows complex notions of self-interest need to be considered when understanding who favors paternalism.

#policy

One of the most moving #books I have read is 'The Immortal Life of #Henrietta #Lacks' by Rebecca Skloot.
#cervical #cancer #medical #ethics #mysogeny #racism #paternalism #HeLa
http://henriettalacksfoundation.org/
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks/

One of the most moving #books I have read is 'The Immortal Life of #Henrietta #Lacks' by Rebecca Skloot.
#cervical #cancer #medical #ethics #misogyny #racism #paternalism #HeLa
http://henriettalacksfoundation.org/
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks/

@LucyWildboots @heinragas @mekkaokereke

Show me the doll where anyone asked for "technical & structural info that might stop them from trying to recreate a broken wheel,".

This is a thread about Mastodon's cultural problems with whiteness. Your proffered #TechnoSolutionism is clearly outlined in many of the linked resources as a part of that problem.

So yes, i am asking you to be quiet. My motivation here is not #paternalism; it is #antiracism.

A better example of #bigotry, #paternalism & #Englishexceptionalism (ignoring all the other countries which have demedicalised #legalgenderrecognition without the ”problems” cited, the Scottish parliament couldn’t possibly know better) would indeed be harder to find. She truly IS a Tory!

Latest papers: Rory Aird discusses epistemic #paternalism. Whilst it may prove an effective strategy in tackling #Covid19 collective irrationalities, we do not have any way to use it without incurring serious risks. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2022.2146490 #OpenAccess @philosophy