Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

I have mixed feelings about this article.

It's quite long, and it uses that length to highlight the problems a universal set of human rights has. He makes some good points about the problems, but nothing that anyone with some familiarity with the area won't already know.

Fine.

Then in the final section, where one might expect some kind of alternative to be proposed he starts talking about development aid, and how that hasn't worked either, and he points out that small-scale, less ambitious projects are often more successful. I think few would disagree with the general thrust of his argument here.

In the very final couple of paragraphs he attempts to say that because large scale aid programs don't work then human rights treaties are "an act of hubris".

I don't think he makes this case very well at all.

Finally - and my biggest criticism - is that he doesn't attempt to provide alternatives to the idea of respect for human rights as a source of moral imperative and authority.

If human rights have failed then that leaves only two main sources of authority: raw power (in the military and economic senses) and religion. I don't find that an acceptable framework to reason with when trying to decipher "good" and "bad".

If human rights have failed then that leaves only two main sources of authority: raw power (in the military and economic senses) and religion.

Religion is just another case of authority. It's not substantively different. The raw power you speak of is the threat of violence; with religion the threatened violence just happens in the afterlife.

Human Rights, on the other hand, is not an authority; it is a proposed set of limits on any form of authority.

The article posits that "the central problem with human rights law is that it is hopelessly ambiguous" and this is where it goes really wrong. Making the laws more specific and binding wouldn't help.

The fundamental problem is that you can't task an authority with enforcing limitations on its own power. And if you task an outside authority with enforcing those limitations, it becomes an existential threat. National sovereignty is the concept that a nation is the highest power; there is no legitimate higher power with authority over nations, therefore a nation has unlimited power over its citizens. That's fundamentally in opposition to the concept of human rights, which the article correctly recognizes, but then it attempts to put an anti-colonialist spin on the issue. Posner is talking from both sides of his mouth.

I don't find that an acceptable framework to reason with when trying to decipher "good" and "bad".

But that's essentially what authority is: a framework for humans to collectively decide good from bad and right from wrong. If you can't decipher them on your own and make the right decisions all by yourself, then you need some form of authority. Just don't expect to find one that limits its own power.

No, human rights legislation, or more precisely the British nature of gold plating things, has led to human rights law becoming a source of authority in that it frequently compels action from the state.

Rather than being a "you can't do that" like many constitutions it is instead become a "you must do that" to the state.

It was only very recently that the EU court explicitly said that national courts can look at the intent and not the explicit ruling when using their judgements on other countries. All too often previously the UK has directly implemented rulings that were addressing concerns in countries that didn't have other safeguards that the UK had.

>But that's essentially what authority is: a framework for humans to collectively decide good from bad and right from wrong.

No, authority is just a way for authority figures to get what they want while reducing the amount of actual work they have to do.

Perhaps, but it can be both. The two concepts aren't mutually exclusive.

The foundation of all laws is the right of the stronger. Government monopoly on power is a prerequisite for being able to implement derivative "rights." Human rights are an articulation of what the west has found generally leads to productive and stable societies over the last 200ish years, but it took us well over 2000 years of rather violent despotic rule to get there.

The implementation of human rights has required the continual political participation of citizens (not really an apt term for a baron, but it will have to do) since at least 1215 and the only way we were able to get there is because various groups of men had enough power to confront their ruler and demand concessions.

The problem we face today is that the modern state is far and away the most powerful tool we have ever created and is highly resistant to change (this is a feature, not a bug). Instability often takes a long time to reveal itself (consider Syria) and is extremely bloody and violent yet for some reason we don't quibble about the "human rights" of combatants in a civil war. If you want fast change it is almost certainly going to be in the form of violent conflict and the expected value of winning needs to be vastly higher than the value of maintaining the status quo (unless you have a large unemployed male population between the ages of 18 and 34).

So we (wisely) settle for slow change in our own countries while demanding the rest of the world quickly catch up so we can stop feeling guilty which is tantamount to demanding they forsake even a semblance of stability and a modicum of rights for bloodshed and the potential for the victorious regime to be worse than the current one (as Egypt had the misfortune to discover).

If there is a solution it almost certainly is to work patiently with other countries and push for gradual liberalization and development of governmental institutions that are less corrupt. China is a perfect example. They are walking a fine line between economic and political liberalization and if they move too quickly in either direction they risk igniting a revolution at which point we can throw human rights out the window along with the bodies.

Human rights are like a design doc that no one know how to implement (and no team has been hired to implement) and was created by reading half the api of four similar software projects that have been under continuous development for over a hundred years (just imagine that for a second). The doc might contain some essential truth's about what said piece of should do in some abstract sense but gives no guidance about how to do it and certainly doesn't mention the various children sacrificed during the implementation of the reference systems.

If there is a solution it almost certainly is to work patiently with other countries

The problem here is that it assumes an "us" and "them" approach, which is clearly invalid. The article does a good job of pointing out the differences in interpretation of the right to free speech, even across "western" countries. Those difference apply to everything.

I was hoping the article would present an alternative way of reasoning societal goals. For example, the Chinese government often emphasises the value of stability and cohesion. I don't think these values (on their own) are necessarily better or worse than those articulated in the declaration of human rights.

Maybe it is possible to unify these under a single framework? For example, the "least harm" model is often used for evaluation of morality. Perhaps that makes sense here too?

I think that people have been looking for alternatives to Hobbes for a long time. Unfortunately unless we vastly improve our education systems or fundamentally change certain aspects of human nature most of his observations about leviathans vs the state of nature (revolution) tend to coincide with the principle of least harm when considered over slightly longer timescales.

With respect to societal goals I think it is also important to realize that we often want conflicting things and that in the US we struggle with societal goal setting (just look at the absurdity of the debates over healthcare because we essentially refuse to articulate and decide on societal goals around health).

>With respect to societal goals I think it is also important to realize that we often want conflicting things and that in the US we struggle with societal goal setting (just look at the absurdity of the debates over healthcare because we essentially refuse to articulate and decide on societal goals around health).

Of course the US refuses. To decide on goals about health would imply that there are higher values than the pursuit of capital accumulation.

>In the very final couple of paragraphs he attempts to say that because large scale aid programs don't work then human rights treaties are "an act of hubris".

The author explained why large scale aid programs don't work - because large scale programs treat foreign cultures like they are western cultures, or aspire to be. Every culture's idea of "human rights" is different. For example, Europe believes the freedom of speech does not extend to libel or defamation. America does. Islamic states don't think freedom of speech extends towards religions.

I agree with the article, and I would go one step further. There is no such thing as human rights. They are just wishful ideals humanity invented.

> For example, Europe believes the freedom of speech does not extend to libel or defamation. America does

Perhaps you were thinking of how truth is a shield against charges of defamation, but I feel compelled to point out that defamation is unlawful in the US.

An extension of the old "if everyone was just like me, the world would be a better place" kind of thinking.

Indeed. Restrictions on women in Muslim countries sound bad, but western countries don't allow women to go topless in public and don't allow prisoners or children to work for money at their own discretion. They even have compulsory detention for children (school), which is a human right sacrificed in the name of economic development but doesn't get complaints because us westerners are used to it. If only everyone else was just like us we could forget those inconvenient human rights and just do things the normal proper way (sarcasm).

If you really want to you can walk around topless in Germany. It is also legal in New York.

In Germany, you can't (Erregung öffentlichen Ärgernisses). There are (gated) semi-public areas where you can, but that's very limited.

This is for sexual activities in the public and just being nude does (usually) not qualify for that. Somebody could try to go after you for molestation but that is pretty unlikely. Even being completely naked should usually not get you into real trouble besides the police asking you to get some cloths or leave the place. But nudists indeed prefer a bit of separation to avoid any possible conflict.

If the police asks you to put some clothes on then, well, you can't walk nude publicly. They won't let you go without doing that. That was my entire point.

If you meant, you can walk nude in public without fearing draconian punishment then, yes, Germany is luckily a country having a sense for proportionate punishments.

If you base your world view on religion and absolute moral values you may believe that there are real rights but besides that I would assume that most people agree that rights are just human conventions.

Interestingly, HN seems to have a large number of people at the intersection of athiesm and absolute moral rights.

I would assume that is the same thing as atheism and agnosticism - if you are pedantic you have to call yourself an agnostic but for all practical purposes atheist will do. So even if you practically believe in absolute moral values under close inspection you end up with men made conventions.

I believe these are one and the same at the bottom of it all...

When humanity is the ultimate authority and life is finite, rights become of paramount importance. When we start to assume justice or reward in a life to come (or reward in the perfect communist state to come if we just make some sacrifices now...), or we assume a higher unfathomable plan behind every event, or when we start to think that the individual is less important than the congregation, human rights tend to go right out the window. A casual glance back through history seems to show this to be the case.

I think rayiner just wanted to express that atheism and absolute moral values is a common combination of believes although they are quite incompatible.

no they aren't.

How do you arrive at absolute moral values if they are not God-given? There are some very real limits like declaring murder a good thing which will just extinct your moral values pretty quickly but besides that? What is fundamentally wrong with killing people with green eyes?

What can you provably say you know? What is irrefutably beyond dispute and based on no suppositions whatsoever?

When has a god ever demonstrably actually ever given any sort of commandments? So where are the absolutes hmmm?

What is fundamentally "wrong" with killing people that have green eyes? I don't know. What is fundamentally wrong with killing people who don't pray like you do?

When you have to ask questions like that, I think you have not followed the issue far enough.

>How do you arrive at absolute moral values if they are not God-given?

By not defining morals in terms of "what a great authority figure in the sky will reward or punish".

Or, by convention. They are what makes our society cohesive. Darwinism selects for societies with functional values.

> How do you arrive at absolute moral values if they are not God-given?

Its just as possible to assume moral axioms directly as to assume moral axioms prefaced with "God says". You can do this either for detailed rules, or for high-level rules from which detailed rules are derived by reason.

Sure, I mean, the Cultural Revolution, Soviet Dekulakization, the Khmer Rouge genocide... it's a good thing those were areligious genocides. Think of how much worse they could have been.

Did you maybe miss an important point in my comment? Communism in those forms is another type of idealistic extremism willing to sacrifice the individual for the "higher purpose". And no surprise... the new religion preaching about the life to come behaves in the same brutal way.

My opinion? There is nothing higher than the individual. No time more important than now. Just my opinion.

A rare appearance of the No False Scotsman fallacy.

Not a "true Scottsman" fallacy at all.

Organized group brutality appears when the individual becomes less important. If this is because of social ideology, or because of a religion that is in fact a social ideology, the effects are the same.

When these are discarded, the value of the individual re-appears.

Brutality, force, and violence don't simply appear, they are the bedrock of our society. Without force and without the willingness to make use of it, you are doomed. You can make up nice rules and pretty rights but some people will just ignore them. And there is nothing you can do about that besides forcing them to obey or jail them or kill them. So at first you become very powerful and then you make up nice and less violent rules and you enforce them with your power. The hard part is just using your power in a responsible way.

I would say there is a marked difference between justice and brutality.

I realize this line has become very blurred in our world, but there is a difference.

No, not a "true Scotsman" fallacy. The opposite fallacy: everyone is a Scotsman.

Not everyone.

Just those who wear kilts and play bagpipes and come from Scotland. Even if one has red hair and one has black hair.

> When humanity is the ultimate authority and life is finite, rights become of paramount importance.

No, they don't. Sure, some people articulate this kind of reasoning, other people start from the same premise and get to nihilism and might makes right.

Of course, some people get from the idea of a divine law to rights, divinely ordained, having paramount importance, and others work from the same start to the idea that material success is a sign of divine selection, so whatever you do to succeed -- as long as it works -- is clearly divinely backed.

What I really think it is is that people's views on the importance of rights and people's religiosity or areligiosity are usually formed independently (though perhaps from some common influences), but the former will tend to get rationalized as a consequence of the latter, whether or not there is any real relationship.

In my estimation, some people have simply not followed this line of reasoning to the logical conclusion....

A person may conceive there is no god and set themselves up as god. Or they may simply substitute something else for a god. But at this point, they simply have puffed up something into something it is not or they don't take a realistic view of where and what they are.

But be that as it may, the idea that religion provides absolutes becomes rather laughable looking around at the dogmas and and sheer number of them.

>There is no such thing as human rights. They are just wishful ideals humanity invented.

So... there are no such things as wishful ideals that humanity invented? Are "human rights" any less real than other idealised human concepts, for example "justice"? Or are you saying that they are unachievable, and thus not worth striving towards?

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