Modern society isn't some Mendelian pea experiment. And using the "one could argue" trope is really not helpful and could be construed as incendiary...

How is laying down an opposing view that I don't necessarily support and using "one could argue" incendiary ?

Don't you think there's value in playing the devil's advocate, just for the sake of the argument ?

> How is laying down an opposing view that I don't necessarily support and using "one could argue" incendiary ?

because it's fundamentally bad-faith argumentation and when it's used to argue that people don't deserve to live, people find that adversarial and an attack on their existence.

> Don't you think there's value in playing the devil's advocate, just for the sake of the argument ?

look, you're not arguing about the color of the bikeshed here, are you?

I think you'll find there's certain viewpoints that we don't want people even "hypothetically" (not really, the whole point of the devil's advocate is that you inherently feel that it has some merit worth) advocating for. People find it real offensive if you argue that they don't deserve to live, and in this case that includes disadvantaged people who are barely scraping by.

it's a coward's way to argue for something that you think holds some merit but you don't actually want to attach your name to, and when the argument itself is adversarial/antagonistic or genocidal we should generally not be encouraging that even in a "hypothetical" (again, not really) sense, no.

And when you are basically arguing "poor people need to be cut off from their safety net" etc that does reach towards the genocidal things - everyone knows what happens next when people on the edge of survival are cut off from their remaining resources. It's arguing they as a class don't deserve to survive.

Like gosh "I said it was hypothetical, it's a devil's advocate, what are you even mad about???" is such a HN perspective.

well, I disagree. I think that entertaining the argument will not turn civilised people into your rendition of the devil, and I think that nothing should be out of bounds for discussion.

I could not argue for letting people suffer and not helping them, I'm not a lunatic. Would the argument that they are unfit for current conditions hold some merit ? Perhaps. I cannot know, and neither can you. It is a far too complex topic to firmly attest an opinion on, especially with our limited current knowledge. Is that an extra reason that this makes it an interesting topic to discuss ? I think so.

The extrapolation to genocide from a simple discussion is akin to calling everyone with different opinions a nazi. It's plain silly.

>I could not argue for letting people suffer and not helping them

But that's literally what you did in your top comment

I did not, you should re-read my top comment.

It is not fundamentally bad-faith when he presents the argument honestly. He makes no sign that he isn't willing to discuss the argument purely on its merits. His comment could set us up for a healthy discussion on why one should (not) hold that specific opinion.

If one does not already know of any bullet proof counter argument, then presenting a "hypothetical" (devil's advocate) argument is extremely helpful to investigate why that argument is in fact wrong (or the "hypothetical" might even be correct. How can you know if you don't investigate the counter arguments?)

Refusing to engage with an argument because it is "dangerous" leads to no deeper understanding whatsoever.

For as long as we have been humans, we have also changed current environment. Accepting Mad Max as the outcome to breed for, one could also argue, sucks.

Two counterpoints:

A.

The sum total of all humans alive at moment X are fit to be alive at X and have an equal fitness of survival.

Divergence occurs when we talk about probability of surviving in future time frame Y. Even so, criteria that defines current and future fittest in "survival of fittest" can be many things. Dinosaurs roamed the earth, but mice survived whatever killed the huge, strong lizards.

B.

A society that does not care for its least might find that its least are not loyal. This can have security implications, especially when bordered by unfriendly states.

Many years ago, I worked as a short order cook at a chain restaurant. The economy was doing quite well, and unemployment was low. This was actually a real problem for us, because we couldn't hire dishwashers. Turns out nobody wants to do a shit job for shit pay when alternatives exist.

A perhaps generous view of how the Federal Reserve manages our economy is to avoid inflation. A less generous view might be that they aim to keep unemployment high enough that workers are desperate enough to accept shit jobs, and that wages don't take too large a slice of the pie. Obviously this requires less than full employment, such that they actually define full employment as "the highest level of employment that is consistent with price stability".

In other words, one output of the way our economy is managed is that some people are desperate. At that point you're simply stack-ranking people, and claiming that the bottom 3-4% deserve to be desperate regardless of actual fitness. (Never mind that we don't have anything close to a meritocracy.)

>A perhaps generous view of how the Federal Reserve manages our economy is to avoid inflation. A less generous view might be that they aim to keep unemployment high enough that workers are desperate enough to accept shit jobs, and that wages don't take too large a slice of the pie. Obviously this requires less than full employment, such that they actually define full employment as "the highest level of employment that is consistent with price stability".

There's no need to make insinuations that the fed is conspiring to oppress workers when their mandate (as defined by congress) to both have maximum employment and to avoid inflation.

"The Federal Reserve Act mandates that the Federal Reserve conduct monetary policy "so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates."

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/monetary-polic...

>In other words, one output of the way our economy is managed is that some people are desperate. At that point you're simply stack-ranking people, and claiming that the bottom 3-4% deserve to be desperate regardless of actual fitness. (Never mind that we don't have anything close to a meritocracy.)

Contrary to what you might think, "full employment" doesn't mean 0% unemployment. There are many reasons why you don't want 0% unemployment[1]. Therefore the fed targeting 3-4% unemployment (or whatever they think "full employment" is, isn't some sort of plot for "stack-ranking people".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment

The fed has a dual policy mandate. You forgot the second half.

Is it worth making this specific argument if you don’t think it’s true ?

Otherwise, we’re in societies that evolve at crazy paces, some parts of our lives 5 generations ago were radically different from our lives now, while other groups almost didn’t change. I don’t see the concept of “fitness” to be relevant to our current situation where we have no idea of what’s coming up even in 50 years. In times of uncertainty, diversity is a better bet than trying to optimize for a status quo.

From what I've seen of families in poverty, it is usually less about them fitting into the current environment and more an issue of them having a surrounding culture that makes it hard to take advantage of the current environment.

A simple example is that people in a poverty culture tend to spend money immediately on short term gratification. On one hand, we could assume this is because they are foolish, but many have experience that if they try to save $20 for something longer term, someone in their household will end up just taking the money for something else. So their are acting rationally by trying to convert that $20 to something that will bring pleasure to them rather than deferring the pleasure only to lose the ability to spend the $20 on something they would enjoy.

Citations are of course needed, since I find the idea that most poor families have this pot of money anyone in the household can loot kind of bizarre. In the end, can you really blame a poor person for spending $3 on gatorade instead of water? That $2 price difference might amount to 0.1% of their monthly rent. You probably feel a lot happier at the end of the month eating a variety of things versus rice beans and water day in and out until you die, and the overall financial outcomes would probably be the exact same since no one is getting out of poverty through cutting out snacks and tasty things. They get out when their job changes.

There are a couple studies that indicate poverty itself creates a cognitive load that results in overall poorer decision making.

This seems like an argument in favor of social darwinism — a school of thought that has been (and still is, with any amount of thought) thoroughly debunked.

This of course makes the assumption that the current environment is any good. Sometimes the current environment is quite bad and hostile to most people. If you are in the artic circle, its probably more realistic to survive being given some warm clothing, than to strip down naked and march thousands of miles to the equator where the environment suits your (lack of) clothing.

The latter is not generally what we do as humans, only when all other means of survival fail do we migrate. We have the ability to use technology to adapt to our environments, such as in making clothing, and even change the environments, like making a warm dwelling or lighting a fire. These are within our toolsets for survival so we should use them, versus moving to where we happen to find adaption without these abilities.