inactive

Leona's post is here.

Her YT video is here.

[image description: a tweet by user @indigenousAI saying

but!

if you’ve been a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, you can enroll into the address confidentiality program (free of cost!) and be registered to vote as an absentee voter and your name and address will not be made available for the public

it is super easy to get enrolled - the application takes like 5 minutes, but it has to be with someone who is certified to do it (most likely an advocate! try going to a family justice center in your area or calling the Attorney Generals office in your area!!!!)

ALSO : 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_confidentiality_program

ianthe art by @officialspec

- Does it harm people? - Does it result in inequality? - Does it prevent people from engaging in society?

As long as the proposed idea (behaviour, policy) clears those two hurdles, it’s good to go for progressives.This type of thinking is super compatible with consequentialism. For conservatives, there are more foundations to consider - authority, loyalty, fairness, purity and “liberty from”. 

- Does it violate established social hierarchy? (in this approach, hierarchy is good and beneficial). - Does it damage in-group bonds? (again, strong in-group loyalties are considered to be good). - Does it fail to reward contributors and punish wrong-doers? (this is a big one - fairness is about just desserts and consequences for actions, not equality). - Does it breach the sanctity of the body? (this is a complex one, rooted in cultural notions of disgust and body as a temple). - Does it force people to engage in actions they disagree with? (this is the freedom from taxation, PC, and so on).

Libertarians pretty much care only about Liberty from things, usually the government.

This complex set of values means that the same idea or policy will get different moral evaluations. Let’s take a few examples:

Legalising weed: all fine in terms of the progressive foundations. But it breaches purity (the body is a temple) and to an extent interacts with conservative version of fairness by removing a punishment on what they consider to be morally wrong behaviour. 

Universal healthcare: again, all clear in progressive values. This policy will help. But in the conservative value set, the policy fails at fairness by ‘rewarding’ non-contributing behaviour (poverty and illness). Let’s not get into a debate over how this is even classified as behaviour rather than a condition. It also breaches freedom from for people who are mostly focused on being free from government, rather than private insurers. The interesting caveat is that purity should favour healthcare - if the body is sacred, we should as a society value accessible ways to keep it healthy and clean. However, because many health conditions have contributing behavioural factors, it can be considered unjust to help people out of the consequences of their actions - even at a net loss to society.

I’d like to talk about why conservatives say things like this, for my progressive friends who genuinely don’t know anyone like this. I was a libertarian, sort of, as a teenager (I recovered) and have read Hayek, Nozick, and Friedman. Here goes.

Sure, there are plenty of Repubs who are just cruel and like seeing people suffer, especially certain kinds of people. But there are plenty who think they are being virtuous and morally strong here.

Here is a brief anecdote about participating in college debate which was overrun by libertarians. There was a debate about drug testing welfare recipients. I argued against it, in part by arguing that the policy would disproportionately impact women. This ENRAGED my opponents, and apparently the judge (well beyond the normal “debate” energy). The issue was that 1) I mentioned women-stuff, but mainly that 2) I made an argument about the CONSEQUENCES of a policy, and I was supposed to decide on the justice of the policy in a vacuum of pure logic, and then wherever the chips fall: justice! No matter how it turns out.

And I think this is what progressives miss when arguing with conservatives. They believe a policy is just.  You tell them about the consequences: people suffer. They don’t care. You say: How can you not care, you monster.

But: Libertarians/conservaties’ whole deal is that you can only decide what is just BEFORE the consequences occur. You might be able to predict the consequences before making the policy, but they believe you *shouldn’t.* They think you should be strong enough to ignore them and make a purely just policy (generally based on property rights).

So if you examine your principles and derive a policy that results in a mass of people starving, they think that consequence is irrelevant to the justice of the policy. Justice can only be decided before consequences. And they think you are immoral for thinking otherwise.

In philosophy class, discussions about “deontology” and “teleology” – whether morality comes from the intent or the result of an act – focused on examples wherein, for example, you feed a hungry person but accidentally poison them, or try to murder them but end up helping. In most of those philosophical examples, the person’s intent seems most important, and the results are unexpected and unforeseeable. But IRL, people who subscribe to an entirely intent-based ethic aren’t talking about these things.

This is why such people might subscribe to a policy that tries to reduce teen pregnancy via abstinence education, but actually increases it due to ignorance and lack of contraception. Showing them the results doesn’t change their mind bc they think considering results is immoral. This is why such people enjoy policies involving work requirements in order to receive, say, food aid. When told that there are no jobs, or that many people receiving the aid are caregivers and cannot work full-time, they literally believe they are morally required to ignore this.

There is some mental gymnastics here. Most people do have some level of empathy for abject human suffering. Calling libertarians/conservatives psychopaths or something doesn’t capture this.

If you’re a liberal or progressive and hear about suffering, you probably think you, or we, should do something about it, or at least you feel guilty for not doing anything, or not being able to do anything. Because you *start there* when forming policies and beliefs. The progressive mind looks at the suffering in the world and reasons backwards to develop policies. The conservative mind finds this deeply corrupt. They reason the other way: decide what is just, and if suffering results, the only way to remain moral is to harden yourself to it. If you allowed your empathy to decide policy, you would override what you had decided was just in a “pure,” results-free thinking space.

So this is what’s happening when everyone I know RTs some Republican, like “This guy is a psychopath who doesn’t care about people suffering.” That’s now how that guy sees himself. He probably thinks he is mentally strong and pure for making policy regardless of consequences. I’m clearly against that. But I understand it. As a teenager, I for some brief time existed in a space where I cried over newspaper articles about famine, but also read Ayn Rand (frankly, Robert Nozick is half as silly, a thread for another time)

It takes mental gymnastics to decide that “taxation is theft” or that we should design society as a “perfect meritocracy”, and then to note that many people would die, and then to “stay strong” because you think the first thing is justice and the second is just unfortunate. So, this is what’s going on in a lot of people’s heads when you point out the consequences of their policies and tell them they don’t care. They may care on a personal level, but they believe they are better than you for not letting it affect policy.

How do you work with that? Well, do you have a coherent philosophy about the limitations of property rights that leads to your desired result? No amount of evidence of suffering will persuade people who expect you to begin at the other end.

Dick Me Down December

The depressed people were far more accurate in estimating how much influence their actions had on the outcome of the game compared to their nondepressed counterparts, who consistently overestimated the effects of their own choices on their chances of winning.

Then I remember this other study (CW animal testing) where they put rats in a bucket of water that they couldn’t get out of, so they’d have to swim. There was a fairly consistent point at which the swimming rat would falter, and stop swimming, fated to drown.

Except that that’s when the researchers would pull the rat out of the bucket, give it a nice rest warmth and a meal.

When those SAME rats who had been rescued before were put in the same situation again, they swam much LONGER than they had before.

Why? The risk was the same either way- drowning. You’d have thought that the fear of drowning would keep them swimming to their maximum length no matter what.

The researchers conclusion was that the rescued rats had something they hadn’t had the first time- they had more hope. A miraculous rescue could come, and that let them swim for longer, just in case.

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”