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47 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 25 Aug \ parent \ on: What qualities distinguish someone as a high-value person? ideasfromtheedge
Along similar lines, I've been frustrated with the quality of recent interest in the abortion debate. Both sides use exceptions as examples of who their policy protects when they probably agree on the exceptions. I'm satisfied with some kind of mental iverson bracket for exceptions, and would prefer they talk about the average case. But maybe I've been thinking about it wrong and formalizing exceptions in all their intuitive weirdness would clarify the average case.
I had no idea that function had a name.
I've always been conflicted about this. I remember reading some Ayn Rand book where she was arguing that you shouldn't get hung up on how a philosophy handles weird edge cases, but rather how it handles the bulk of plausible ones.
At the time, I had a visceral reaction against that position. If your philosophy doesn't handle the weird cases, doesn't that imply your principles are not correct? And, if your principles are not correct, then why do you think they account for anything well.
I've become more sympathetic to the idea of focusing on the center of the distribution, though. It's like getting the first order approximation established. From there you can develop the more complex second and third order approximations of moral truth.
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Godel's theorem is why I prefer systems that don't strive for completeness.
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