Hacker News Reader

Comment by trgn | Hacker News Reader

I get where you're coming from, but it's not an error. It's your civic duty to make that distinction.

By definition, half of people are worse (however you define worse) than average. The world is truly held up by the inertia of the achievements of our betters spanning generations. I praise myself lucky every day to live in a stable western country with a heritage of centuries of liberality and thousands of models of civic courage and leadership.

If the edifice we're standing on is stable, and let's hope so, it's despite the frothing masses of idiots and vengeful iconoclasts. Yes, always a good chance I myself am one of these idiots, but nonetheless, it doesn't make the overall assessment any less true.

The inability or unwillingness to point out right from wrong is either due to a lack of courage or an absence of hubris. Both sides of the same coin. That judgement, who to entrust with the levers of society, needs to happen.

View on HN

It sounds like you believe those in power are more astute or intelligent than those they exercise power over. I disagree. I don't think there is a positive correlation between a person's ability to impose their preferences on others and the quality of their preferences. If anything, I would guess there may be a negative correlation, considering the kind of person who is likely to become a successful politician. Thoughtfulness and intellectual rigor is not exactly reward in politics.

I would also bet that those who are the most interested in imposing their preferences on others probably are way less likely to listen to or attempt to understand different perspectives, leading to not even understand the views and practices they seek to ban.

> It sounds like you believe those in power are more astute or intelligent than those they exercise power over.

It's not what I said at all.

It's inevitable that the levers of power are held by some. We've been lucky in the west, all things considered. So going forward, who's it going to be? The crazies? Hope not!

Sorry for misunderstanding you.

I'm not sure if it's really inevitable, but if it is, I think tolerance should be their most important virtue. I think that's also what sets western rulers apart as generally higher quality. They are usually more tolerant of dissent and individual differences, compared to their counterparts in other parts of the world.

> tolerance should be their most important virtue.

Certainly. Hard to put in practice too.

> By definition, half of people are worse (however you define worse) than average.

It's worse than that when you're trying to make decisions on behalf of everyone. It's perfectly possible for the decision that's right for you to be wrong for well more than half of the population for diverse individual reasons that they each understand and you don't.

Which is why in cases like that you defer to the individual to make their own decision, and if you think your choice is better, convince them rather than force them.

That's true in the ideal, and I 100% agree. But not in the actual real world, because, very tritely put, nobody is an island.

Individual choices always have some blast radius. Some small (what movie I'll watch), some large (what chemical to kill my weeds with), some of unknown magnitude (whether to lock up my gun in a safe or not).

That's where the trap comes in. Somebody needs to meddle at some point. Who's going to define what that point is? Who's going to define the course of action that's both virtuous for the community and for the individual. I certainly hope it's not going to be the crazies.

> That's true in the ideal, and I 100% agree. But not in the actual real world, because, very tritely put, nobody is an island.

No, it's true in the real world. That's the issue. Nobody is smarter than everybody. The consequence is that you should never prohibit someone from making a choice "for their own good" because the chances are better that they understand and act in their own best interest than you do.

Where you need some kind of government action is for externalities. Dumping industrial waste in the river might be rational from the perspective of the factory, because they don't live down river, so you need a law to protect the people who do from the factory acting in their own self-interest. You can't convince them to stop doing it with argument because safely handling the waste is more expensive for them in actual fact. You have to change the math by prohibiting the bad act.

That's still subject to the same problem. You can enact highly inefficient and ineffective environmental regulations by being lazy or uninformed or corrupt. But for that we don't have any alternative than to do the best we can.

For getting people to make better choices or hold better ideas, we do. We try to convince them. If we fail, it's more likely to be because we're wrong than they are. Forcing them should not even be attempted.

>The consequence is that you should never prohibit someone from making a choice "for their own good" because the chances are better that they understand and act in their own best interest than you do

Say that to all the OSHA regulations that were written in blood with a straight face

OSHA regulations punish employers for the actions of employees. That has its own set of problems but it's a kind of externality. The law isn't punishing the employee for refusing to wear safety equipment, it's punishing the employer for refusing to provide it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com