From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon May 27 2002 - 01:06:15 MDT
Wei Dai wrote:
> On Sun, May 26, 2002 at 09:11:28AM +0200, Amara Graps wrote:
>
>>I wonder why you think that people's strong expressions are not useful
>>information from which you can learn. The people on this mailing list
>>are not very representative of humanity as a whole and this is a
>>text-base medium which can be very limiting. Don't you think that it
>>would be useful to know that some ideas are repugnant.. and why?
>>
>
> I thought it was a consensus among Extropians that the so called Wisdom of
> Repugnance is in fact not a reliable guide to complex policy issues (such
> as the laws against child abuse that we were discussing). If you think
> about it, feelings like nausea were "designed" to prevent us from doing
> immediate harm to ourselves or people we care about, not to help us
> analyze social problems, whose complexities could not possibly have been
> anticipated by evolution. The fact that someone feels repugnant about some
> social policy really gives very little useful information about whether
> the policy actually does more good than harm.
Friend, there was no "complex policy" that justified ignoring
the ethical and moral qualms of the very real people involved.
If you want to believe that wannabe Vulcans are the only ones
that have something to say on such issues then go ahead, but
don't expect a lot of agreement.
Feelings like nausea also give us pause before our big brain
does us and others harm. Social situations are about real
people so these feelings are not without validity and value. If
you can calmly consider a social policy of infanticide then I
consider you monstrous, not the wave of the future and of
dispassionate reasoning that you may wish to see yourself as.
>
> Also, emotional arousal makes unbiased reasoning even more difficult than
> it already is and does not help in effective communication of ideas--it
> causes people who disagree with you to take your ideas less seriously
> rather than more seriously. At least that has been my experience. If your
> experiences have been different, I would be interested in learning about
> them.
>
Reasoning without heart or grounding in real life is also
extremely dangerous. It let directly to some of the great
tragedies of history. Why should I take ideas seriously that
are specious declarations of the lower value of women (the real
discussion that most raised the ire of many of us here) and that
it is ok to kill children because "they are easily replaced?"
It will take a lot of evidence for me to see any reason at all
to consider these ideas even worthy consideration.
- samantha
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