Comment by claudiawerner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by claudiawerner | Hacker News Reader

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>weakening its own position by requiring the addition of special case rules and self-contradiction: fear of facepunching, but not fear of the gay - what makes one valid and the other invalid?

You're asking this question with some knowledge that there is some difference in the minds of people between the two matters. Therefore, we can draw a difference, we just may not have a philosophical grounding to express the difference rigorously. I can see how that's a problem, but it does not stop consideration of the principles. Even if the difference is arbitrary, we can't escape arbitrary reasoning in our moral and legal systems.

The difference from my perspective is that I'd be more inclined to protest a law criminalizing gay people for (using your example) having sex in private than I would be someone arguing in a public forum that Jews should be punched in the face.

Is my decision arbitrary? Maybe. Does it rely on a judiciary and legislature that agrees with my ad-hoc principle in order not to run away with it? Yes. That's not necessarily a problem. It's not much to ask people to think beyond pure abstraction of high-minded principles.

You (or some other citizen) may disagree with me and come to the opposite conclusion I have, or not. That's fine. I'll vote for my principle, and you can vote for yours.

I don't believe there is a difference in the minds of people between the two matters! Or rather, people may hold a different opinion on the validity of the fear, but one fear is the same as another fear. I do believe there is a difference in the relation of their fear to reality, which is why I think policy should just attach to reality to begin with. I don't think the difference is arbitrary - I think there is a relative and vital material difference, it just cannot be reduced to a quality of the fear in itself.

>I don't believe there is a difference in the minds of people between the two matters!

Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you: do you think that if you were to take a representative sample of the population of a Western European country or the US, they'd be just as opposed to regulating fear caused by gay people having sex in private and fear caused by someone coming up to a Jewish person and saying that all Jews should be kicked in the face?

>but one fear is the same as another fear.

From what perspective? If it's a subjective perspective, we'd have to turn to psychological studies. If it's an objective perspective, there's no way of knowing that at all, since fear is inherently subjective.

>I think there is a relative and vital material difference, it just cannot be reduced to a quality of the fear in itself.

I agree, but this is precisely the problem with the harm principle. You can overload 'harm' with (what I consider to be) a silly harm, such as causing fear of the 'gay agenda' because gay people have sex in private, and a more serious harm, causing fear of being punched in the face.

My point is only this: the idea that only contact, physical harms are in the domain of society's lawmakers is highly suspect. If lawmakers are granted the power to regulate mental harms (and in some cases they already are in most countries including the U.S.), we can have a discussion (or at least a preference, if not all parties can come to a rational well-grounded principle) on which of those harms can be regulated - and in my view, in most Western societies, the people would be much more likely to say that the Jewish face punching situation is much more serious or deserving of regulation than the gay agenda situation.

Huh, now I can reply here, but I couldn't earlier. Fyi I'd replied over at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133273 .

Reply depth limit reached, answering here:

> Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you: do you think that if you were to take a representative sample of the population of a Western European country or the US, they'd be just as opposed to regulating fear caused by gay people having sex in private and fear caused by someone coming up to a Jewish person and saying that all Jews should be kicked in the face?

I think there would be significant policy disagreements, but I think those policy disagreements would overwhelmingly cash out in whether they considered the relevant fear valid or not, which comes down to the fear-reality relation I mentioned.

> I agree, but this is precisely the problem with the harm principle. You can overload 'harm' with (what I consider to be) a silly harm, such as causing fear of the 'gay agenda' because gay people have sex in private, and a more serious harm, causing fear of being punched in the face.

Right, but you can't do that in my extremist formulation because it specifically doesn't acknowledge fear as harm. I'm sure it can be abused, but you have to try at least a bit harder than that. :)

> My point is only this: the idea that only contact, physical harms are in the domain of society's lawmakers is highly suspect. If lawmakers are granted the power to regulate mental harms (and in some cases they already are in most countries including the U.S.), we can have a discussion (or at least a preference, if not all parties can come to a rational well-grounded principle) on which of those harms can be regulated - and in my view, in most Western societies, the people would be much more likely to say that the Jewish face punching situation is much more serious or deserving of regulation than the gay agenda situation.

My point is this: overwhelmingly, most fears the state should address can be justified by appeal to a harm that is not fear in itself. And the remainder tend to be the source of the most explosive controversies of the culture war - precisely because by making the reduction of fear a policy goal in itself, we have opened the door to appeasing hysteria, with all the perverse incentives this implies.

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