He's basically making a consequentialist argument in favor of diversity rather than utility. Whatever increases diversity overall is good, and whatever reduces it overall is bad. So it makes sense for Western civilization to be a net negative. I can see how killing would generally reduce diversity, since when you're dead you can't really do anything, except maybe when it conflicts with cultural practices involving killing.
You'd have to make the case that that's also true of child molestation, but I don't see how that follows, and he doesn't make the case in this piece at least. And him personally thinking it's fine would be consistent with him using it as an example of moral relativity, and with his defense of preagricultural societies in general, plenty of whom didn't have a pedophilia taboo.
If he thinks there are any other moral goods, he doesn't state what he thinks they are and his points about morality being relative would undermine them (just like they undermine his claim that diversity is a good tbh).
Well, on the other hand trauma introduces all kinds of behaviors that nontrauamatized people generally don't do. Think of something like dissociative identity disorder: that could definitely qualify as diversity. The pscyhological experience of trauma is itself a diversity of experience. The condition of being traumatized is a kind of neurodiversity. And a wide range of differing sexual norms is definitely cultural diversity.
Killing's final, prevents the victim from ever doing anything again, but inflicting harm on someone else isn't necessarily.
It's really not a good framework for people who are anti-molesting children.
A range of possibilities entails differences. He doesn't argue for self-determination for its own sake or anything like that, just diversity. So, whether an individual has a say over it or not, a greater range of possibilities, in culture and psychology like in biology and ecology, would be good. All the things I mentioned would expand that range of possibilites, in ways that we would consider bad (because they obviously are) but in ways that would be good if the foundational good were diversity.
America limits diversity in the way it consumes and homogenizes everything it comes into contact with, but that's not necessarily true of abusive behavior.
The same principle would apply to different kinds of diseases, as long as they're not lethal or not very lethal (ignoring everything else he has to say about disease, which is complete fucking pseudoscience). Herpes is diversity. Chronic back pain is diversity. Mental illness is diversity (and this is one I know for sure a lot of anprims like to make, and one that really pisses me off personally, even if they insist that the conceptualization of mental illness as mental illness is incorrect).
Evolution, then, is simply a consequence of diversity. All organisms are subject to “dumb luck,” and untold heritages of the world were pre-emptively snuffed out by rocks falling at the most inopportune moments. Yet, the diversity of populations of organisms played with the probability of that dumb luck. Falling stones did not kill the swift and the slow in equal measure. Trees with flame-removedant seeds inherited the earth after enough forest fires had gone through. Evolution happens, as the inevitable consequence of a diverse world. As Dawkins abstracted it in The Selfish Gene, the diversity of possible chemical reactions meant that, eventually, a reaction would occur that reproduced itself. Such a reaction would have a higher probability of occuring again, as it was no longer relying on pure chance to do so. Anything that reproduces itself — even ideas — are subject to natural selection and evolution.
There's no self-determination in evolutionary contexts. Diversity is just a range of variation. Self-determination would only be relevant insofar as it produces diversity, which he describes as a blind behavior of the universe, not just choices made in human society.
If diversity required self-determination, there'd be no biodiversity. Plant species can't be diverse because they can't self-determine, etc.
Sure, more often than not, but not always. Choosing to conform to a norm would reduce diversity, choosing to maintain American society would reduce diversity, etc. Self-determination is secondary at best, so we end up having to justify things just on the basis of whether they increase or decrease diversity, not on the basis of whether they're compatible with self-determination.
And I mentioned why I think abuse, trauma, disease, and other awful shit meet the mark for diversity.
Mentally ill people definitely add diversity on the whole to society, in terms of contributions to different aspects of culture, in terms of introducing a greater range of behaviors than only mentally healthy people would, in terms of having a wider range of internal experiences than mentally healthy people - and that has nothing to do with self-determination. If anything, self-determination would get in the way of that diversity. And this all applies to trauma, specifically. It absolutely can be disabling, but I don't think disability necessarily reduces overall diversity. Almost always the opposite.
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He's basically making a consequentialist argument in favor of diversity rather than utility. Whatever increases diversity overall is good, and whatever reduces it overall is bad. So it makes sense for Western civilization to be a net negative. I can see how killing would generally reduce diversity, since when you're dead you can't really do anything, except maybe when it conflicts with cultural practices involving killing.
You'd have to make the case that that's also true of child molestation, but I don't see how that follows, and he doesn't make the case in this piece at least. And him personally thinking it's fine would be consistent with him using it as an example of moral relativity, and with his defense of preagricultural societies in general, plenty of whom didn't have a pedophilia taboo.
If he thinks there are any other moral goods, he doesn't state what he thinks they are and his points about morality being relative would undermine them (just like they undermine his claim that diversity is a good tbh).
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Well, on the other hand trauma introduces all kinds of behaviors that nontrauamatized people generally don't do. Think of something like dissociative identity disorder: that could definitely qualify as diversity. The pscyhological experience of trauma is itself a diversity of experience. The condition of being traumatized is a kind of neurodiversity. And a wide range of differing sexual norms is definitely cultural diversity.
Killing's final, prevents the victim from ever doing anything again, but inflicting harm on someone else isn't necessarily.
It's really not a good framework for people who are anti-molesting children.
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A range of possibilities entails differences. He doesn't argue for self-determination for its own sake or anything like that, just diversity. So, whether an individual has a say over it or not, a greater range of possibilities, in culture and psychology like in biology and ecology, would be good. All the things I mentioned would expand that range of possibilites, in ways that we would consider bad (because they obviously are) but in ways that would be good if the foundational good were diversity.
America limits diversity in the way it consumes and homogenizes everything it comes into contact with, but that's not necessarily true of abusive behavior.
The same principle would apply to different kinds of diseases, as long as they're not lethal or not very lethal (ignoring everything else he has to say about disease, which is complete fucking pseudoscience). Herpes is diversity. Chronic back pain is diversity. Mental illness is diversity (and this is one I know for sure a lot of anprims like to make, and one that really pisses me off personally, even if they insist that the conceptualization of mental illness as mental illness is incorrect).
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There's no self-determination in evolutionary contexts. Diversity is just a range of variation. Self-determination would only be relevant insofar as it produces diversity, which he describes as a blind behavior of the universe, not just choices made in human society.
If diversity required self-determination, there'd be no biodiversity. Plant species can't be diverse because they can't self-determine, etc.
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Sure, more often than not, but not always. Choosing to conform to a norm would reduce diversity, choosing to maintain American society would reduce diversity, etc. Self-determination is secondary at best, so we end up having to justify things just on the basis of whether they increase or decrease diversity, not on the basis of whether they're compatible with self-determination.
And I mentioned why I think abuse, trauma, disease, and other awful shit meet the mark for diversity.
Mentally ill people definitely add diversity on the whole to society, in terms of contributions to different aspects of culture, in terms of introducing a greater range of behaviors than only mentally healthy people would, in terms of having a wider range of internal experiences than mentally healthy people - and that has nothing to do with self-determination. If anything, self-determination would get in the way of that diversity. And this all applies to trauma, specifically. It absolutely can be disabling, but I don't think disability necessarily reduces overall diversity. Almost always the opposite.
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