Someone once was arguing this point to me and I just had to drop the topic because it was such a baffling stance.
It of course sounds insane when you say it baldly like this, which is why it rarely gets stated openly. But a lot of traditional societal structures depend on harm to others, so there's a big constituency for the suffering of others when it benefits the speaker.
It’s such a rabbit hole, who should know best?
Not true. You raising the demand of a good enables the producers to employ economies of scale thus making food less expensive for all.
As to "Who should know best?" that's exactly what we're paying our politicians to be on top of.
We can start with the internet! :)
I don't think there is anyone who actually thinks of these things in terms of "regardless of the harm it causes others". Ok, this being the internet, we can probably find one, but I don't think there's any significant portion of the population. That position is basically a strawman.
I do think, however, that there's people who draw the lines in very different places, or put different weight on different categories of harm.
As an example, physical or financial harm are very easy to verify. There's not a lot of debate about if they qualify. Mental or emotional harm, on the other hand, is very hard to verify. This presents a significant problem for anyone who is worried about the system being abused. These groups will draw lines at very different places around any claim of harm within those categories.
The end result is that you'll end up with one group being labeled as grifters who want to fleece the system, and the other as being completely insensitive to human suffering (sound familiar?)
That's not even to get into the debate of what constitutes harm. For example, is not helping someone harming them? Is ceasing help once you've started helping someone harming them? These are too big of questions for the post, but I imagine you get the idea.
A clear historical example is America's conflict around slavery. The primary southern justification for creating the Confederacy was freedom. That continued after the Civil War; see the UDC catechisms for example. "States' rights" they'll shout, meaning the right of the white people in power to treat black people like livestock and keeping that in that condition through systematic violent abuse. And you'll still find people today arguing the point.
A modern example is public health. Everything from preventing toxic waste dumping to COVID mask mandates is met with cries of "FREEDOM!" Right now there is a large constituency in the US for the right to do whatever they please even if that means they will kill people by giving them a disease.
I agree that what constitutes "harm" can be a tricky question for some issues. But I think we can agree that death qualifies. And that people who have never left the house unclothed having to wear another half-ounce of fabric in public is not.
I think this is an excellent example of what I meant about "how direct the harm is" mattering.
Imagine, if you will, a continuum ranging from absolutely direct harm to absolutely indirect harm.
On the absolute left, imagine person A stabbing person B. That's about as direct as you can get, right? And I also think there's not a ton of people who would disagree that stabbing someone should be banned (let's ignore self defense arguments).
On the absolute right, imagine person A moves a chair. Someone trips over this chair. That person ends up in a foul mood and cuts someone off in traffic. This causes a traffic jam. In this traffic jam, a refrigerated truck breaks down and a bunch of food is ruined. More food is ordered, which takes up space in a shipping container that would have gone to medicine, had the food not been ordered. Person B dies because of a lack of medicine that would have been there had person A not moved the chair.
This was about as indirect of series of events as I could come up with, but I think you get my point here. There's a direct causal chain between person A's actions and person B's death in both scenarios, but I can't imagine very many people really condemning person A in the second one. In fact I think someone trying to ban moving chairs because of this incident would be soundly ridiculed.
So where does going outside without a mask during a pandemic sit on this continuum? Well, going outside without a mask, if you have a high viral load, and someone comes close to you, there's definitely a chance they could die. That's definitely not nearly as direct of harm as stabbing someone. It's also clearly not nearly as indirect as that tortured example I came up with in the second one.
Personal opinion? It's definitely farther to the left than the right. Say, somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of the way to the left. Maybe somewhere around 2/3 of the way there.
Someone's opinion on something such as a mask mandate, is going to depend on if they view that as direct enough harm for the government to have a legitimate interest in regulating.
Better?
Are you saying that people who smoke openly state that they "should be free to profit regardless of harm to others"? Who said that? Where? I already asked you to point to a single example to support this claim that certain people think this way, and you couldn't do that. That's because there's literally no people who think like that.
And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one.
You're the one pretending. There's a difference between these 2 things:
1) Taking actions (like smoking) that put others at some level of risk
2) Thinking that placing any level of harm onto others is justifiable as long as it's profitable
You know very well there's a difference between those things, and yet you're pretending to not understand, while claiming that I'm "pretending not to understand".
Or are you claiming that the average smoker cares so little about fellow humans that they'd be willing to push a person over a cliff ("any level of harm") in order to steal a half-empty beer can from them ("a profit")? Even if we assume a situation where they would be guaranteed to profit the half-empty beer can, I think it's safe to say almost no-one would think this level of harm would justify this level of profit.
Yes, a smoker will put your life at risk by smoking near you. In related news, a driver will put your life at risk by driving near you. Doesn't mean that smokers or drivers will do literally any level of harm to humans in order to gain the tiniest of profit to themselves.
For a guy who is very eager to accuse others of straw manning, you seem to be working very hard to invent things so that you can dismiss them.
People may not be monsters, but quite a lot of them are just ordinary arseholes. You know, the kind of ordinary arsehole people who would thoughtlessly -- or, if they happened to come to think of it, wilfully -- do as they want, regardless of harm to others... As people so often do. Because, while they may not be monsters, many of them -- of us -- are certainly arseholes.
One gets the feeling someone has just realised this, and is on a desparate quest to convince themselves they aren't actually an arsehole... By convincing everybody else that no such arseholes exist. This is doomed to fail, because everybody knows they do.
> Everyone is willing to cause some harm/risk to others in order to gain something for themselves
Yup. Which makes us all more or less arseholes, because "some" harm/risk to others still is harm/risk to others.
And which was also all that was claimed to begin with -- there never was any original claim of "any level of harm"; that was always a windmill your fevered mind conjured up all on its own. So, how foolish do you feel now that it (and with it, your attempt at convincing yourself) has gone up in a puff of smoke?
> Yup. Which makes us all more or less arseholes, because "some" harm/risk to others still is harm/risk to others. And which was also all that was claimed to begin with
This was not "all that was claimed to begin with" - in fact the opposite of such was claimed. The original claim paints a very clear picture of 2 groups as polar opposites in their regard for harming other humans. This is in stark contrast to my claim (which you conceded to above) that most of us are similar (not polar opposites) in regard to harm. For reference, here's that claim again:
>> America has two radically different concepts of freedom that travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free to do as I want". One ends with "as long as I don't harm others". The other ends with "regardless of harm to others".
Continuing on:
> One gets the feeling someone has just realised this, and is on a desparate quest to convince themselves they aren't actually an arsehole... By convincing everybody else that no such arseholes exist. This is doomed to fail, because everybody knows they do.
Yeah no, I don't care about that. If you want to say "all of us are more or less aresholes", instead of saying "all of us are more or less empathetic", that's fine. Both of those statements are true. I'm also somewhat of an arsehole by risking other peoples' lives by actions such as driving a car, sure, fine. That's not the point. My point was: people are mostly similar in their relation to harm, as opposed to being polar opposites. You have already conceded to this, and now you're just trying to reframe the original argument as somehow meaning the same thing, when in fact it meant the opposite.
> there never was any original claim of "any level of harm"; that was always a windmill your fevered mind conjured up all on its own. So, how foolish do you feel now that it (and with it, your attempt at convincing yourself) has gone up in a puff of smoke?
I'm not sure what exactly you think has gone up in a puff of smoke. Definitions for well-established English words still exist, they haven't gone up in smoke. This includes the definition for the word "regardless", which doesn't change at your whim. For example, here's the Cambridge dictionary definition for it: "despite; not being affected by something". If my decision to do something is "not affected by harm/risk to others", then clearly the level of said harm has no bearing on my decision. Thus, the words "regardless of harm", and "regardless of any level of harm" mean the same thing. You're trying to make a big deal out of me using slightly different words in reference to the original claim, even though those words mean exactly the same thing.
Furthermore, even if we don't get stuck on definitions of individual words, but instead look at the general sentiment expressed in the claim, it's very clear that the claim is painting these 2 groups as polar opposites, and I'm painting them as similar to each other (and you have already conceded that the groups are similar, in your message where you said that all of us are "more or less arseholes").
Do they actually say out loud “I am willing to profit regardless of how much I harm others”? No, probably not. But actions speak louder than words here.
Yes it is. Here is the full statement copypasted without modifications:
> America has two radically different concepts of freedom that travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free to do as I want". One ends with "as long as I don't harm others". The other ends with "regardless of harm to others". You were dealing with the latter.
According to the original claim, there are two groups in America. One group (hint: democrats) can not justify any level of harm in exchange for their freedoms, while another group (hint: republicans) will justify any level of harm in exchange for their freedoms. The original claim paints these 2 groups as polar opposites, while in reality both groups are willing to accept various levels of harm in exchange for various levels of freedom. They merely disagree about some tradeoffs.
> Secondly even if you insist on an extreme level of harm there are still examples. We can use any of a number of dictators that are literally willing to kill millions to stay in power.
Sure, I accept this example. Yes, there are some rare individuals who truely are monsters and are willing to cause extreme levels of harm in exchange for their own personal benefit. I don't think half of America is like that, though.
> Yes it is. Here is the full statement copypasted without modifications:
> > America has two radically different concepts of freedom that travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free to do as I want". One ends with "as long as I don't harm others". The other ends with "regardless of harm to others". You were dealing with the latter.
No it isn't. "Regardless of harm to others" is not the same as "regardless of any level of harm". Just bloody look at them: Is there any mention of levels in the first? No, there isn't.
Now please do us all a favour and stop this -- we're all too excrutiatingly embarrassed on your behalf just from seeing you make such a spectacle of yourself.
Definition of "regardless" is "without regard or consideration for". If there is no consideration for harm, then it does not matter what the level of harm is. Therefore, "regardless of harm to others" means exactly the same thing as "regardless of any level of harm".
Even if you are using your own dictionary to invent new meanings for words to win imaginary arguments inside your own head, it's not exactly clear to me how you interpret this original quote in a manner that doesn't paint democrats and republicans as polar opposites:
> > America has two radically different concepts of freedom that travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free to do as I want". One ends with "as long as I don't harm others". The other ends with "regardless of harm to others".
So I take it you work with computers...? Natural languages like English don't work the exact same way as programming languages like C.
> Therefore, "regardless of harm to others" means exactly the same thing as "regardless of any level of harm".
No it doesn't: Most people, not being monsters, wouldn't inflict immediate, grievous harm on others just because it's easier on themselves. They wouldn't, for instance, walk around with the lid off a container of nerve gas just because they can't be bothered to put it on, immediately killing all who come near. They realise and accept that they can't be free to do whatever they want regardless of any level of harm to others.
Many of those same non-monster people are smokers. And many -- at a guess, a majority -- of those, in turn, being a bit of an arsehole like we all can be, do gladly put their own convenience and immediate gratification above their consideration for you and your lungs: They know the dangers of second-hand smoke, but some unknown level of possible breathing disorders at some unknown point in other people's future, and some small amount of shortening of these other people's lifespan... That doesn't count the same to them as carrying a lidless bucket of sarin gas: They'll blow smoke in your face (or at least exhale it in your vicinity, where it will sooner rather than later find its way into your lungs). So they obviously do think they should be free to do what they want regardless of some level of harm to others.
What you've been saying boils down to "You're wrong in claiming that everyone would gladly nerve-gas everyone around them!". But nobody ever claimed that. The original contention was just "people do shit like smoking regardless of the harm it does to those around them".
I can't even grasp how you couldn't see this. (Nor can I tell which would be the more charitable way to react to your behavior, to take it as genuine or fake. AFAICS, neither alternative is possible to interpret particularly charitably.)
That's literally the opposite of what I've been saying. That "everyone" in that sentence, man, do you not listen at all? I've explained to you multiple times that the topic of contention is not "degree of evil that everyone has" - the topic of contention is whether people are grouped into 1 group or 2 groups in this context. What I found offensive in the original post is that it grouped people into 2 groups instead of 1 group. And yet you're here pretending that I'm upset that someone grouped people into 1 group. No, that would have been fine, but they didn't do that. If the original post had grouped people into 1 group, like if it had claimed "everyone is an arsehole", that would've been fine by me, as I've explained to you multiple times. My issue was with a description that divided people up by party lines and described one group as saints and the other group as evil.
> The original contention was just "people do shit like smoking regardless of the harm it does to those around them".
No it wasn't. The sentiment in your statement is that "people are similar in this way", whereas the sentiment in the original post was "people are not similar - there are 2 groups of people, one of these is good and the other is evil". For reference, here's that original post again, which VERY OBVIOUSLY describes the existence of 2 groups which are different from each other:
> > America has two radically different concepts of freedom that travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free to do as I want". One ends with "as long as I don't harm others". The other ends with "regardless of harm to others".
I'm arguing that "two radically different" groups don't exist; that people are similar in this manner, not too different from one another. You've already conceded multiple times that you agree with this point. If you want to argue that the original post (which I copypasted above) is also saying that "two radically different groups" don't exist, PLEASE, go ahead, let's see that magic how you will twist those words into the opposite of what they actually meant. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to them in the future, we'd appreciate it.
If people see their freedom as reasonably limited when it harms others, then if that harm is pointed out to them, they'll immediately apologize and stop. The more energy people put into persisting despite that, the clearer it is they don't actually care.
You can look at the history of pretty much any piece of extant consumer or worker protection to find examples of this. Go read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", for example, which painted a portrait of large companies abusing both. It kicked off a long struggle that ended up with substantial shifts in the law. Or you could look at the long history of workplace safety in coal mines. The coal barons clearly saw workers as expendable and any encroachment on their freedoms as intolerable.
Even utter sociopaths know not to talk like they don't give a shit about anybody else. The social consequences for that are too high. So if we want to understand what people care about, we can't just go with their claims about their motivations. We have to look at where they put in the work.
> So if we want to understand what people care about, we can't just go with their claims about their motivations.
I never claimed we should do that. Nobody else claimed such a thing either.
Also, I take it as concession that you were unable to provide a single example to support your claim.
I have provided examples elsewhere. But if they aren't sufficient for you, take it as anything you like. I long ago stopped caring that every internet on the random understood my point, especially the ones working hard to not get what I'm saying.
Not true. You're strawmanning again. I already addressed this distinction between "say" versus "think" in the sibling comment, which I'm sure you've read. To refresh your memory, I said: "That's not how people think, at all. People who do horrible things are very good at rationalizing that they are actually the good guys. This is a well studied phenomenon."
> I have provided examples elsewhere.
Ok, I searched the thread and now found your examples. Let's address one of them:
> A modern example is public health. Everything from preventing toxic waste dumping to COVID mask mandates is met with cries of "FREEDOM!" Right now there is a large constituency in the US for the right to do whatever they please even if that means they will kill people by giving them a disease.
If you actually engage with these people, you will find that these people don't believe that they are causing significant harm to others. You're comparing their actions to literally killing people, as if going to the grocery store without a mask (as a person who has no symptoms and may even be vaccinated) is placing the public to a risk that is comparable to literally homicide. You're trying too hard to rationalize your belief that republicans are evil. They're not. They're normal people like you and I. Most of them care about their fellow humans, even if they see different risk/benefit tradeoffs to decisions than you do.
I have read oceans of anti-masker afguments. Some claim they don't believe they are harming people, and some of those may actually believe it. But the question is whether they have a justified, true belief. They don't. They are all clearly aware of the potential of harm, and the science is pretty clear. Even for the ones who truly believe it, they have to admit that they could be wrong and are going ahead anyhow, so we are back in the "regardless of harm to others" bucket.
And that's not even counting the large number of people who are aware of the possibility of death and are perfectly fine with it. You could look at the Texas Governor speaking proudly about it's ok to sacrifice some old people as long as we're preserving American freedom. Or the Florida governor who banned mask mandates saying, "That’s ultimately an individual's choice to be able to do [vaccines]... And so, I think the question is, we can either have a free society or we can have a biomedical security state. And I can tell you, Florida, we’re a free state."
And masking is just the most dramatic recent example. The history of slavery is super clear. Ditto the history of workplace safety. Or we could look at the societal shifts against drunk driving and secondhand smoke. Both of those were indulged for decades despite high body counts. The shift for each took decades and was fought all the way by people who valued their freedom to do whatever they wanted without regard to harm to others. Including by executives and lobbyists who were well placed to be informed about the actual harm but still worked to keep the laws in their favor without regard to body count.
I agree that all of these people care about some of their fellow humans. They're not monsters. But what they do have is a (learned and often cultivated) lack of empathy for people seen as "other". Which is why we are slowly seeing mask and vaccine resistance decline, along with plenty of deathbed pleas to get the vaccine and for others to get the vaccine.
I agree that slavery, drunk driving and secondhand smoke are very bad. I agree that people who've committed such acts likely have less empathy towards other people.
I disagree with the sentiment you expressed about "mask freedom" and "vaccination freedom". I think vaccinations are great and masks are somewhat useful, but I think the tradeoff of sacrificing freedoms is not worth it to force this stuff on people by government mandate. So I guess I fall in the category that you defined as "aware of the possibility of death and perfectly fine with it". Be that as it may, I certainly don't have the mindset that anything goes, regardless of harm to others. I think there's tradeoffs to be made and I think reasonable people can disagree about those tradeoffs. I'm sure if we went through a variety of different topics (like personal cars) we would find several topics where you're also willing to make tradeoffs "aware of the possibility of death and perfectly fine with it".
This model is incorrect. Many slaveholders were perfectly nice people to family members, for example. And of course to other rich white men. Empathy is reserved to specific groups, and lacking/discouraged/repressed for the rest. This is a learned, societally mediated behavior. You can read Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" if you'd like to see how that works in detail. Mills's "The Racial Contract" is a good philosophical examination, and Loewen's "Sundown Towns" looks at related aspects via data and history.
So we see early on in the pandemic that a lot of white conservatives were perfectly fine with the disease spreading in major cities where people were concentrated. Some were gleeful. Now it's mainly a red state phenomenon and people are still resisting basic public health measures. I think that's still rooted in contempt for the lessers. E.g. https://twitter.com/jacobtwop/status/1436383225451094019
Or you might also read Serwer on "the cruelty is the point".
But all of this is pretty far afield from my actual point, which is that there are two concepts of freedom in American discourse. One admits of nuance and balance; the other is "I do what I want and fuck you". Different people may use one or the other at a particular moment. But the concepts are rhetorically very distinct.
No they don't. That's not how people think, at all. People who do horrible things are very good at rationalizing that they are actually the good guys. This is a well studied phenomenon.
It seems like "as long as I don't harm others" means "I consider the small harm to others worthwhile for the benefits". And "regardless of harm to others" is using the same approach to come to a conclusion you disagree with.
There's a lot of different ways to approach freedom, but I don't think "I don't care about others" and "I would never inconvenience others" is an accurate binary taxonomy.
One that comes to mind is gay marriage.
But to not have those rules ultimately invites leaded gasoline 2.0 as technology progresses.
You can’t reap the rewards of invention without the accountability that comes with it.
1. that lead is natural to the human body, and
2. that a poisoning threshold for lead existed
Robert Kehoe, working for GM, was the chief advocate for leaded gasoline, and really the only person/lab doing research on lead until Clair Patterson stumbled into it while measuring the age of the earth. [0,1]
A modern equivalent might be if Facebook was the only organization researching social media's impact on society, while being able to set the paradigm/assumptions about said safety for half a century.
So even when Patterson's research was published in 1965, it took time to change the paradigm, and more time to phase out lead's use.
Should anyone want to read a narrative about the intertwined lives of Midgley, Patterson, Kehoe and lead, then this Mental Floss article is a good read. [2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Kehoe
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson#Campai...
[2] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-sc...
Like you note, it was also extremely convenient and relatively cheap. Pretty sure at least some of the chemicals we’re using now in soaps or for food processing will have something nasty associated with them once time has passed.
https://www.thewinestalker.net/2015/04/austria.html
I wonder which tastes better?
AFAIK work in any Roman mine was considered a death sentence in the long run.
It is also possible that two of you were arguing about different things despite seemingly talking about the same one. For example, you could be arguing that preventing people poisoning by lead is good, where the other person were arguing that people should bear more responsibility instead of pushing it on the third-party.
I.e. I don't think the person you were arguing with was thinking "yeah, breathing lead is a good idea, let's fill the air with lead!". Perhaps I am too naive...
The remainder of the damage from lead was done to employees, where the advice boils down to "don't work because your employer may be killing you."
Let's take someone with anarcho-capitalism views - the typical answer by an ancap to the lead poisoning problem will be - suing for damages. It is not that ancaps want everyone to get poisoned, they simply do not want to give so much power to a single entity to decide for them. In their opinion, the danger of tyranny is a greater threat to the people than lead poisoning.
Or someone who is not necessary a proponent of free-market and such, but still sees a great danger to all the people of letting one entity to define rules. Not because they see that one particular entity as an evil (although trump's election could be such an example), but rather because that single entity is a single point of failure and when it fail - the whole nation fails. And in that mental model the danger of existence of such single point of failure is greater than danger of lead pollution.
(Similarly, someone who is in favor of regulations is doing so not necessarily because they are trying to build some type of bad `X-ism`, but because they see a great danger if lead poisoning not stopped right away. And that danger in their opinion is greater than the danger of whatever that may come with regulations).
I still believe that the majority of human beings are not evil and most of them would rather not harm someone. But I also realize that most humans will have slightly different priorities. When arguing, I think it is very important to argue about the same thing, otherwise agreement can not be achieved ever.