![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIn essence, I was arguing that people should be able to agree about what the world is like, but might have different ideas about what the world should be like. And also that any organised system of morals is a good but imperfect approximation to our own system of morals.
Talk about the election made me consider the opposite view. Some political contention comes from inherent differences in aims[1]. But much comes from disagreement about means, not ends.
[1] Eg. the extent of wealth redistribution, though no-one likes to call it that. (Almost) everyone agrees that everyone should get an acceptable minimum standard of living, and people who work hard or are otherwise in demand get a better one, but we vary by how much so.
Governing a country is fantastically complicated. You can't say "and then foo will happen with 85% probability." If you know what you're doing you can manage lots of aspects of the economy, etc, which is amazing really, but it's not perfect. And the details are way beyond the grasp of most people.
So A and B and C agree that illegal immigration needs to be controlled, that we need better public hostpitals, and that we need to reform the language to prevent masculine being the default gender. But A thinks that immigration is the main problem, and the others are insignificant in comparison. And B and C think that about the others respectively.
Since we can't say for sure, people are free to have their own opinions. Not because the answer is unknowable, but because in practice it's too complicated to ever know. And when they have opinions they disagree about them, and accuse the others of being evil, etc. So maybe Tory and Liberal policies are equivalent not to right and wrong (not necessarily respectively) but different approximations to a model, like light-as-wave and light-as-photon are different approximations to the probability wave...
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe that I can disagree with anything, even what I write myself. Maybe that if we recognise the cause of the disagreement we'll have less tension.
Talk about the election made me consider the opposite view. Some political contention comes from inherent differences in aims[1]. But much comes from disagreement about means, not ends.
[1] Eg. the extent of wealth redistribution, though no-one likes to call it that. (Almost) everyone agrees that everyone should get an acceptable minimum standard of living, and people who work hard or are otherwise in demand get a better one, but we vary by how much so.
Governing a country is fantastically complicated. You can't say "and then foo will happen with 85% probability." If you know what you're doing you can manage lots of aspects of the economy, etc, which is amazing really, but it's not perfect. And the details are way beyond the grasp of most people.
So A and B and C agree that illegal immigration needs to be controlled, that we need better public hostpitals, and that we need to reform the language to prevent masculine being the default gender. But A thinks that immigration is the main problem, and the others are insignificant in comparison. And B and C think that about the others respectively.
Since we can't say for sure, people are free to have their own opinions. Not because the answer is unknowable, but because in practice it's too complicated to ever know. And when they have opinions they disagree about them, and accuse the others of being evil, etc. So maybe Tory and Liberal policies are equivalent not to right and wrong (not necessarily respectively) but different approximations to a model, like light-as-wave and light-as-photon are different approximations to the probability wave...
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe that I can disagree with anything, even what I write myself. Maybe that if we recognise the cause of the disagreement we'll have less tension.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 06:18 pm (UTC)I think the effect things have on a country is a measurable thing though. I think that though noone will ever know for certain, there are lots of things that we can investigate and become fairly sure about. Things like "immagrants only want to scrounge off the welfare state" can be looked at by talking to immagrants. And humans do have a fair notion of cause and effect in many ways. It may be too complicated to ever be known fully, but it's not so complicated that we can't have intuitions and a rough grasp. So opinions of what's important that fly in the face of what little we can know can still be considered "wrong"
no subject
Date: 2005-04-25 02:49 pm (UTC)I should have just said that last time :) I do need to write out all my thoughts, and then collate them properly before inflicting them; it'd be much clearer and more fun :)
I think the effect things have on a country is a measurable thing though.
Yes, and I think it's important that we should try. But I think the answer is likely to be complicated enough it's hard to draw definite conclusions, and differences of opinion creep in.
For instance, immigrants would all be on a scale from "scrounging" to "tried their best to work but took aid rather than starve" to "working hard and expecting what's due" to "not taking any handouts ever ever", and it's practically impossible to turn that into something that can be compared to the effect that foo other economic policy would have.