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Comment by ses1984 | Hacker News Reader

ses1984

One day your job is going to be a gig job. Sooner or later. If it happens to be later, are you going to be cool living in a privileged oligarch class that has its boot on the face of humanity?

When your philosophy was developed, if you didn’t like your circumstances you could literally move to the wilderness and make a life for yourself by exploiting unclaimed land. Or if you lived in a different part of the world then nations would go to war with each other over resources.

We don’t live in a world with unclaimed land anymore.

It would be really super duper nice if nations stopped going to war with each other over resources.

We have to figure out how to coexist with each other, and that means treating humans with more dignity than an object that is ruled by an algorithm.

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I know this is a very peripheral point but habitable "unclaimed" land has not really existed through most of human history.

At best there might be the occasional power vacuum. Just existing is a political act and the unit of human survival is tribe-sized or larger.

Land described as "unclaimed" is typically a convenient fiction used to support sovereignty transfer.

So in other words, war.

Depends on your definition of war. War typically implies a larger scale and organisation.

The philosophy was developed because people cannot agree on the basics, and there is no supreme moral authority to appeal to. It follows that any enforcement of one person or group's will on another cannot be morally justified, no matter how well-meaning the imposers are. This is the only basis by which people who are fundamentally, diametrically opposed can coexist peacefully.

This assumes an universal ultimate moral precept: that peaceful coexistence despite moral disagreement over every other precept is the ultimate and univeral moral rule.

Of course, one thing on which the vast majority of people, regardless of their different moral systems, agree on is that this is not the case.

Isn't that just forcing the group that wants the status quo's will upon the group that wants change? That doesn't seem like it promotes peaceful coexistence. It just allows the group currently doing the oppressing to continue to do so.

So, that means that land should be free, pedophilia and child porn legal, total anarchy?

There's no such thing as not having the will of a group imposed on others. The best we can do is formalize a non-violent system of consensus of rules we can live by, and then allow only said system to use violence to enforce such rules.... Which is literally what government is.

Pedophilia and child porn involves people who cannot consent, so no. Funny how that's the one that folks reach for though isn't it? Mandating that relationships are consensual isn't equivalent to anarchy. It's exactly one of the rules you're talking about.

I’m not saying I disagree with you re child porn, but realize that you are encoding a lot of moral judgement in what qualifies as consensual. What makes the relationship between Uber and an Uber driver consensual? Can you give consent if your alternative is starvation or homelessness?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwvrxVavnQn [2:49]

I agree it's not an absolute, immutable concept, but I think it's a hell of a lot clearer than "good" or "right" or "fair". What makes consent is the fact that either party can opt out at any time for any/no reason. It's consensual because we are decision-making agents, and in spite of privation we can still choose to refuse to transact. Consent is violated by force or direct threat of force, not by the circumstances the transacting parties may find themselves in.

If you're very horny can you still refuse to consent to sex? If you happen to be dying of thirst and I offer you a glass of water, can you refuse? You can. Are there may reasons why you would? I don't imagine so. Does it follow there there are no circumstances under which anyone would refuse? It does not.

Did anyone get my consent before burning coal and spewing toxic gas into the atmosphere?

Did anyone get my consent before pulling all the fish out of the ocean?

Did anyone get my consent before dumping toxic chemicals into the river that runs through my backyard?

These are are problems of the commons[1], and do need governance. They don't however represent direct interactions between people (unlike say employment or sex) and so consent isn't really in-scope here.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons

Then let’s consider algorithmic driven gig work as a new type of problem of the commons.

At one point damage to the environment wasn’t considered a problem of the commons.

It's not though, it's simply another option in the market. More options are always better than fewer. No one is forcing anyone to take these gigs, and the relationship between gig provider and worker is frankly none of anyone else's business so long as it's consensual. There is none of your air or water being contaminated.

Well we disagree about what consent means, among a lot of other things.

I'm just using the common definition, as applied to personal/romantic/sexual relationships. I even linked a video that quite clearly explains the definition.

Ok, the video doesn’t seem to cover whether children can give consent, and you said they can’t, so what’s missing?

The legal system that decides when we can give consent (when we become adults, the age of majority) and when we can't (legal incompetence ruled by a court of law).

But you just accept the legal system? What’s the basis? What if it gig work was outlawed?

Also, consent being something that should be respected itself is a liberal social construct (that I wholeheartedly agree with).

This hasn't always been the case, and still isn't everywhere today. Slavery still exists, so does misogyny.

I'm a fan of the saying "tolerance isn't a paradox, it's a peace treaty". To extend that, peace treaties are literally laws.

Who and what determines whether a human can consent? It it an age thing consistent across all humans or a developmental thing? If it's a developmental thing, well then how do you feel about those with developmental disorders (mental or physical)? Is it the case that one legally definable day based on age you become inarguably and unambiguously capable of consent?

Obviously, not arguing for CP here, but I'm pointing out that the age of consent is indeed is a (valuable!) will imposed by society on others. I'm bringing CP up because it shows a bound on behavior which exists, and thus there is a line which needs to be drawn.

As I've written below[1], I agree consent is not an immutable fact of nature, but a human construct with arbitrary boundaries. Most of your questions are answered already by the legal system which defines the concept though. In order to consent (say to sign a contract) you have to be of the age of majority and not ruled legally incompetent by a court of law. So basically yes, an age thing, and the "who" that decides is a court of law.

All I'm suggesting is that this liberal imposition - that relationships between adults (as above caveated) must be symmetrically consensual - should take precedence over how good, right, just, harmonious, or fair said relationships are perceived to be. If we think we can make something more fair but less consensual, we should not.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37081906

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