Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

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> The vast majority of people who criticize BLM or any other leftist issue are not racists.

The vast majority of right-wing criticism of BLM is grounded in (sometimes quite overt) racism, as is, frankly, much of the left-wing criticism of BLM.

It's true that criticism of certain things on the left is not dominantly grounded in racism; e.g., while capitalism certainly has racial impacts, the defense by the right of capitalism against socialism and other post-capitalist alternatives isn't grounded primarily in racism, nor is the right-wing assault on feminism grounded in racism.

That's not to say that the dominant basis of those right-wing positions isn't as bad as racism, but it's certainly different from racism.

> You need to realize that for the most part everyone wants the same things.

It may be that most everyone has similar values, but the thought leaders crafting and selling positions (on the right or the left or anywhere else) aren't a representative sample of the population, but a fairly narrow elite, and I guarantee you that the thought leaders of the right and left do not want the same things and differ only on means.

But I also think that the idea that everyone for the most part wants the same things is, at best, inadequately supported and contrary to the readily available indications. There is every indication that there are, on many politically salient issues, fundamental conflicts of basic values and goals, not merely on optimal mechanisms for achieving shared goals.

People most definitely DO NOT have similar values, and this almost entirely explains the left/right divide within the United States. Most Americans have been brought up to believe in shared beliefs like individual liberty, equality before the law, basic human rights, etc. This is the common vision we are striving to achieve. But beliefs are not the same as values. The divide comes in how we prioritize our values in achieving those goals.

Jonathan Haidt has done a lot of important work in this area, I recommend you check him out. Our moral foundations are based on: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity. Lefties really only care about the first two, conservatives care about all 5, and harm/care + fairness/reciprocity typically rank lower than the other values. Look at the FIRST comment on this thread. Then look at the list of values. It is really easy to see what our arguments are about once you know why people think the way they do.

I disagree strongly with your last point. Almost everyone wants to be happy, avoid suffering, have healthy and harmonious relationships, to live life as they choose, have a sense of purpose, etc. Our fights are typically about how to achieve that for every citizen. If you can find a LARGE population of people that does not want those things I will happily retract my statement.

> Most Americans have been brought up to believe in shared beliefs like individual liberty, equality before the law, basic human rights, etc.

This is less true when you get beyond platitudes to what each one of those means in substance.

There is a very significant disagreement over what “liberty”, for instance, means, and over what things are “basic human rights”, among people who agree that “liberty” and “basic human rights” are important goals.

> But beliefs are not the same as values.

Well, beliefs include both fact and value beliefs, but the ones you enumerate are, in fact, values.

> The divide comes in how we prioritize our values in achieving those goals.

Values are root goals, not means of achieving goals.

> I disagree strongly with your last point. Almost everyone wants to be happy, avoid suffering, have healthy and harmonious relationships, to live life as they choose, have a sense of purpose, etc.

Taking that as true, for the sake of argument, that's not wanting the same things, even if people might use the same words. It is a different thing for Alice to be happy, avoid suffering, have harmonious relationships, live as she chooses, and have a sense of purpose than it is for Bob to have those things; it may even—depending on, e.g., what makes Alice and Bob each happy—be mutually incompatible things.

You are conflating real world policy execution with values. Substance can't be mapped onto reality without prioritizing values and deciding accordingly. The belief of individual liberty is shared throughout America, its real world execution will vary depending on the value system of the population in question. We have the same belief, but disagree about how to get there.

I think you're sort of on the right track about values being root goals. Values come first, then we execute policy based on those values. One goal may come at the expense of another. And some lefties might not even recognize a trade off if statistically they don't value something that conservatives value very highly. Or vice versa.

Your last point is in alignment with everything I've said before. We have the same over arching goal (happiness), we just disagree about how to get there. The two paths to the goal are mutually incompatible, not the goal itself. The path is what is in question and conflict, not the goal. This is why it is so important that the path is discussed honestly and openly. Good intentions do not automatically lead to good outcomes, and if we as a society choose the wrong path we are f*. So to bring it full circle, this is EXACTLY why we need more conservatives on campus: to discuss the other paths and evaluate them objectively so that the best path may win.

> You are conflating real world policy execution with values.

No, I'm not.

> Substance can't be mapped onto reality without prioritizing values and deciding accordingly.

That is a syntactically-valid sentence but I have no clear idea what it is trying to communicate relevant to the discussion.

> The belief of individual liberty is shared throughout America

The idea that there is a thing called “individual liberty” that is to be valued is broadly shared. What that label actually means is not a product of such a broad consensus. This isn't a matter of “how to achieve individual liberty” being a matter of disagreement (that is true, too, but a different issue) but the fact of what it means to say “individual liberty” being a matter of disagreement, with mutually incompatible views as to what that means.

> Your last point is in alignment with everything I've said before

No, it's directly opposed to it.

> We have the same over arching goal (happiness), we just disagree about how to get there.

No, that's what you said. What I said is that Alice has the goal “Alice should be happy” and Bob has the goal “Bob should be happy”, and these are not the same goal, and may (depending on what actually concretely produces happiness for Alice and Bob, respectively) may be mutually incompatible goals. And when you scale up to hundreds of millions of people with goals of that style, absolutely are, in very many cases, mutually incompatible goals.

This is not at all a matter of dispute about ideal path to a shared goal, because the goal is not shared. The language Alice and Bob use to describe the goal might be shared (each might say “I want happiness”), but the actual goal is different, it's just the differences are elided in the casual description.

1. Yes, you are. Maybe point two will help see why.

2. You can't define anything beyond a platitude without some sort of values prioritization. Real world definitions will inherently use a value hierarchy. This is where the conflation comes in.

3. Mostly agree, which is why I said real world execution will vary depending on the value system of the population in question. The vast majority of Americans have a fairly similar idea of individual liberty as a general idea/platitude. But again, the value system hierarchy will produce different real world definitions in different scenarios. In order to go from platitude to real world application you have to invoke your value system hierarchy. Which side of any given issue you fall on depends greatly on that hierarchy.

4. See below.

5. I think we're getting caught up in semantics and don't actually disagree on this point. What is shared by the two parties is they each have the same goal: Happiness for themselves. Bob's happiness may conflict with Alice's because of how they are trying to achieve it, but again, they need to talk and sort out why this is happening so that they can get on the optimal path. I think when you say "goal" you are including the means to achieve happiness. I am not. I am simply talking about the pure emotional state. Get more conservatives on campus and we can figure out more ways of achieving happiness that are mutually compatible.

> You can't define anything beyond a platitude without some sort of values prioritization.

Yes, you can. In fact, you can't have a value prioritization unless you can first define the things you are prioritizing, so this is precisely backwards.

And even if you were right, it wouldn't support—or even have any bearing on—your claim about confusing “values with real world policy execution”.

> Bob's happiness may conflict with Alice's because of how they are trying to achieve it

No. I mean, sure, that's possible, too, but beside the point.

The point is Bob’s happiness may inherently conflict with Alice’s; for an extreme example, Bob may derive happiness directly from Alice’s unhappiness. (More commonly, Bob’s happiness may defend on conditions which produce unhappiness for Alice.)

> I think when you say "goal" you are including the means to achieve happiness

No, I'm not. I'm talking about what in economics might be described as each individual’s personal utility function; the mapping from condition of the universe to the resulting happiness of the individual.

1. Many values (about 60%) are determined biologically, there is no definition process. This is not a computer algorithm, I’m talking about how the human brain works, how people work. The brain makes decisions in part by invoking the biologically determined value hierarchy. There is no definition process before this happens. Your subconscious does this without you even knowing it. It has a huge impact. People can’t get to policy without going through their value system. Don’t conflate the two. The definitions you want to create are a language model of what is already there.

2. This is theoretically possible but not at all how most people in the real world function. Not a material impact here. If you believe many people’s happiness depends on many others unhappiness that is classic zero sum thinking.

3. Cool, so we weren’t talking about the same thing, hence the disagreement.

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