{"id":3007,"date":"2012-01-31T15:21:36","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T23:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=3007"},"modified":"2018-03-10T14:56:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T22:56:04","slug":"individualism-%e2%89%a0-egalitarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=3007","title":{"rendered":"individualism \u2260 egalitarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/physioprof\/2012\/01\/25\/selling-libertarianism\/#comment-22141\">Elsewhere<\/a> someone wrote that libertarians cannot be racist or sexist because our defining tenets include individualism.  I responded: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p> As I understand it, individualism is the moral principle that consent can be given, and obligation incurred, only by the acts of an individual, not by membership in a group (definition made up on the spot, probably flawed). I\u2019m not convinced that it is incompatible with racism or sexism. Enlightened people reject racism\/sexism because <em>the weight of evidence<\/em> says that psychological differences within groups outweigh differences between groups, not because individualism decrees a priori that it must be so. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> Have I missed something?<\/p>\n<p>I intentionally glossed over the distinction between personal groupism (treating members of the outgroup differently in one&#8217;s private capacity) and institutional groupism (e.g. legal disabilities), partly because the context didn&#8217;t specify.<\/p>\n<p>It will be interesting to see whether egalitarian legal principles can survive contact with or creation of <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> autonomous artificial intelligences that are more capable than humans in some ways but permanently childlike in other ways; <\/li>\n<li> uplifted animals; <\/li>\n<li> aliens in whom the concept of &#8216;individual&#8217; is fuzzy, such as Didonians (Anderson, <i>The Rebel Worlds<\/i>), Boaty-Bits (Pohl &#038; Williamson, <i>Farthest Star<\/i>) and Tines (Vinge, <i>A Fire Upon the Deep<\/i> et seq.). <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elsewhere someone wrote that libertarians cannot be racist or sexist because our defining tenets include individualism. I responded: As I understand it, individualism is the moral principle that consent can be given, and obligation incurred, only by the acts of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=3007\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3007"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3949,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007\/revisions\/3949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}