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If you, for eg. have a bias towards self-reliance, your choices may be robust to some consequences, but you may create harder choices for others (including chickens if you grant them personhood). That's the definition of a negative externality.
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Power is not having to deal with the negative externalities of your own choices. It's okay to seek power, but it shouldn't be confused with virtue. You may act in ways that never require you to ask for help, but you might still act in ways that force others to. Moral hazard.
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This is my basic problem with libertarian virtue ethics focused on 'sovereign individual' type thinking. It often conflates power and virtue, and using power to force harder choices on others for personal responsibility. I'm fine with darwinist competition so long as you own it.
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Everything you say is reasonable. The point of the thread your post prompted is to point out that there are two deeply conflicting worldviews underneath. I think "the everything is interconnected and may be meaningless so let's just be kind" perspective is getting too much play.
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I think it actively devalues development of basic skills and sense of responsibility. And it is responsible for frequent misjudging of what should be choices between good and good.
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Skills are different from responsibility. I think the world has become rather full of people with lots of skills but almost no sense of responsibility. Moral hazard actors. And they get away with murder by acting like impossibly high skill demands on others is fine.
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Yes. The world is also full of people who don't aspire to either skill or responsibility. If you look at classical goals of education, it has been to combine skill development with outward focus. You can't do this without individual responsibility.
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We've actively disassembled every method that is used to instill these qualities together. Didactic writing is bad. Selling yourself is good. Utilitarianism and pragmatism rule. Individual feelings and happiness are paramount (or individual success is paramount.) etc.
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I don't think most people have a basic grasp of how stuff actually works. In part, this allows the few that do to exert too much power. In part, it allows people to be too easily manipulated.
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Another line of thought that I suspect is very dangerous to read as virtue. "Knowing how stuff works" is not the same as "knowing how to work stuff profitably." A lot of self-congratulatory skill/knowledge is the latter.
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Taleb's green lumber fallacy interpreted differently. I think it's actively bad that someone can get rich trading green lumber without knowing what it is, because they can create unsolvable problems for people who do know and care what it is.
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A lot of education valorized by the less principled members of the school of thought you're steel-manning is in fact exactly this kind. Teaches you how to win with "green lumber", and how to convince yourself you deserved it. Let others deal with the externalities of your hack.
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