The Danger Of Good Intentions

  Blender Dumbass
May 06, 2023

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https://blenderdumbass.org/articles/is_using_blender_s_denoiser_evil_ : 👁 1

Sorry. I will not make a dialogue between characters this time. I already did one about paternalism in the past. And I don't really have any brain left for it now. Moria's Race takes all my attention. But this topic somehow keeps creeping at me all the time. Maybe because Moria's Race is a movie questioning paternalism in a way. But anyway, here is an article.

Paternalism - a world view that states that sometimes forcing a person against their freedom, if for their own good, is acceptable. A good example is the collapsing bridge thought experiment. A bridge is about to collapse and you know it for certain. You advertise this fact so people will not go onto the bridge. You put signs. You tell people about it. But somebody still walks toward the bridge with what looks like an intention to cross it anyway. You show that person the signs. No response. You yell at the person "The bridge is about to collapse!". No response either. You realize that the person probably doesn't even speak English. Is it okay to force this person, to reduce his freedom, and force him out of the bridge?

The answer seems very obvious to a lot of people. Of course! Otherwise he may die. How can you sit there and do nothing when a life is in danger? But this point of view is flawed. First of all we don't know if the person will collapse with the bridge. Bridges are built with extreme tolerances. And perhaps one person crossing it will not cause that much of a problem. From the other side, how sure are you that the person doesn't speak English, or doesn't understand the danger? What if the intention of the person is to collapse with the bridge and die with it? What if it's an act of premeditated suicide? How dare you stop a person from that? And even if we know that the person is not about to suicide and we know that bridge is going to collapse exactly as the person would cross. And both are undeniable facts. Are you yourself flawless and know exactly about every danger that happens around you and act accordingly?

Paternalism and Contracts

Take for example software EULAs. A lot of people sign them without reading and get themselves into trouble. And nobody seem to have an issue with that. And it's not even a problem with EULAs. Just contracts in general. People seem not to care about what's written in papers they sign. All of my colleagues always argue about what they signed because non of them knows. Was I the only one reading the contract? So here we have a bridge that's about to collapse: a term in the contract that you don't like. And here you have a person that doesn't care and signs the damn thing. Maybe it's a foreign worker that doesn't read the language in which the contract is written. And the employer doesn't have a version in his language. So should we force him out of signing it for the reason that he doesn't understand it?

You may argue that the boss would communicate the contract in some way anyway. Like the hours that the person will work. And general description of their duty. But contracts are concrete sets of agreements. And not knowing absolutely everything written in there leaves you to potential abuse from the other side. But then again... Isn't it my freedom to be stupid? Isn't it my freedom to disregard caution and do something that only feels like the right thing to do, even if it's going to bite me in the ass later?

Paternalism and Right To Repair

Have you ever heard a greedy company deciding to decrease your freedom by giving you a safety argument "You can't fix these because your safety is at risk.". This is a use of paternalism. I don't buy that those company actually give a crap about people and believe in paternalism. If it was so I think they would not make people sign stupid EULAs unless those people understand them. And they would give people who understand how to repair the right to repair. But what they truly care about is their ability to sell new crap to the people. Which right to repair makes hard to do.

But even though they are not paternalists, paternalism is handy for them. And therefor I think paternalism is extremely dangerous. The thought that they are trying to sell goes something like this: People do not know what they are doing when they are trying to repair things. This may lead to those things exploding or working badly. And it may cause harm. So we should restrict the people from trying to fix things.

And unfortunately not only a lot of people believe this, but they support this kind of thinking "Restriction is good if it's for your own good". And so slowly but surely, bit by bit freedoms are chipped away until we are no longer free. But this time we didn't even notice it, because we agreed with it.

Paternalism and Censorship

In Israel - a country with "Freedom of Speech", there is a law not allowing you to deny holocaust. And if you do you will be sent to jail for 5 years. In the United States of America there isn't that kind of law. But both Israel and United States and many other countries that say that they have Freedom of Speech they still have censorship laws for one thing or another. Most countries, for example, make it illegal to spread child pornography.

Why does censorship still exists in 2023? Paternalism!

Say that your collapsing bridge is Democracy. And if its collapsed you will get a form of Nazism. And you see a stupid enough person walking towards it without realizing it, by listening to people that promote it, or by listening those who deny how bad it was. You are afraid that this person will become "ruined" and therefor you restrict him. Not allowing him to listen to those people ever again. This is paternalism. And this is how censorship is justified.

Multiple times governments tried to justify censorship of video-game violence this way. And it didn't work. Every second research paper on the subject seem to never agree with the previous one. It looks like this kind of research is very dependent on confirmation biases of the researchers in question. Video games are so popular, especially violent ones, that finding that a killer X loved a violent video game is easy. Also finding that most people playing violent video games aren't killers is easy. So you have in abundance research papers proving both sides of argument.

I personally believe that there is almost no connection between the two. Humans have a region of the brain called the frontal lobe. It's responsible for not doing stupid things. It's responsible for suppressing inner anger. For example a lot of people are totally okay with gruesome horror films like the Saw franchise, but cannot look too much on a footage of a real wound. It's related to that reasoning region of the brain. Humans are sophisticated enough to tell what is real and what is fake. And to tell what is okay and what is not okay.

Think about any story involving a villain. How do kids watching a super-hero movie know who is the hero and who is the villain? They judge their actions. The villain will bully people for no reason. He will kill people just because he doesn't like them. He will try to only satisfy himself at the expense of others. A hero is almost a polar opposite of that. Kids see what people do in the movie. They judge them by their actions and know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. And it works even if characters are complex. And even with very small kids. So with adults we can expect the same, if not better, reasoning. There is always a possibility that kids are just better at everything though.

So video game violence, or movie violence, or even just exposure to violence, is barely connectable with being violent. There should be a frontal lobe deficiency to commit acts of horror. And the problem is not publications, the problem is psychopathy.

I already talked about how psychopathy could be contagious. People who live in war zones need to adjust their thinking to survive. So they will kill eventually, or be killed. But people in developed places where dangers are only those on the screen, have no reason to get so tough. So they don't.

But here come paternalists and argue that censorship is necessary. "We should not spread hate speech" they say. They believe people are morons and can't decide for themselves. More than that. If you eliminate the villain from the story, the worst hero becomes the villain. The line should be drawn somewhere. And if the very bad doesn't exist, somewhat bad becomes the new very bad. And so those paternalists making themselves look bad by introducing censorship.

Paternalism and Software

I am getting frustrated by people with regards to software. Maybe my frustration is caused by a long lasting effect of too much paternalism around. In software development there is a notion of "protecting the user against themselves". And a lot of people think that it's a feature. A convenience of some kind. So more and more software is developed by paternalists.

I remember long time ago getting very angry on a video that was talking about production of Toy Story 2 and how the project was almost deleted completely by mistake. It appears to be that they ran a GNU / Linux based server to hold files and someone by mistake almost executed some command that deletes the file-system. So the author of the video suggested staying away from GNU / Linux because of that.

You know, in prison there is a soft room... It's for those who are more deranged. It's like a highest form of punishment. Because it's literally a room designed to make it impossible to hurt yourself. Freedom on the other hand is full of danger. And you have to know to operate danger around to be free. It's good to have security, but not at expense of freedom. Security secures privacy. And privacy secures freedom. So having security at the expense of freedom defeats the point entirely.

Google Drive is way too paternalistic, for example. I remember even 10 years ago it already had a virus scanner for things you uploaded and now want to download. If I remember correctly, if you put a Libre Office document into Google Drive and want to download it. You will be able to only download a Microsoft Word file back. This kind of paternalism is so bloody annoying! They think that there is no possible way that you will use Libre Office. So their server is pre-configured to convert everything into a Microsoft Office proprietary format. What the hell?

I'm pretty sure Google is using a reverse engineered .docx encoder because they are not Microsoft. And I'm pretty sure that this decision had nothing to do with corporate interest. It's just that they want to "protect users against themselves", by being completely annoying.

Weirdly enough not only proprietary software does paternalism. A kind of paternalism is even done by the Free Software Foundation themselves. This is why I think paternalism is very dangerous. It often comes from good intentions. Technically speaking, the way FSF did it was not really that problematic. You still have the freedom. It's just harder. They endorse only operating system to which is hard to install proprietary software. If the system developers make it too convenient to install proprietary software, they don't endorse it anymore. Technically speaking they don't say that should not be able to install it. If you couldn't there would not be freedom in that. But still, there is a bit of dangerous paternalism lurking there. And I see why people are a little skeptical of FSF because of it. It's nowhere near as bad as Google Drive or Apple. But there is a bit of that saltiness that I feel a bit weird about.

Paternalism and Children ( Catch 22 )

A person that goes onto the bridge might have less experience. For example he might know so little English that he might not understand what you are saying. Or he might know English very well, but not understand why should a collapsing bridge scare him.

Experience comes from all kinds of sources. You can read / watch stories. This is experience conveyed in a painless way. You can try things and fail at them. You can try other things and succeed. Basically the more you try things and the more things you learn, the more experience you get.

New Born Babies have no experience. They are not totally blank slates, things like desire to in-jest food already exists in them before they are born. But babies are quite blank when it comes to experience. Children growing up play, with toys, then with real things, they are been told stories, shown pictures and movies, and slowly but surely they acquire the experience necessary to operate smoothly in the world.

But say a paternalist comes by and says that it's better for the safety of the children if they are not allowed to gain any experience until they have the experience. Of course they don't say that. That would be absurd. They say something like: kids are young and therefor we can't allow them to do dangerous things. But only do. Knowing about dangerous things is apparently too dangerous. Experience is denied because they don't have no experience. Catch 22.

A good example is law making it illegal to watch porn if you are a child. Here is how the absurd reasoning goes: There is sex. It could be dangerous. We all can come up with a few things why sex could be dangerous. So we do not allow kids to have it because they have no experience of it. Okay, so to get experience they need to access information about it some other way. Say see pictures, films, read books about it. That will give them experience and we could then allow them to have it finally. No! There comes back the video game violence censorship mindset of a paternalist. They will learn how to do it and will do it. Maybe they will do it before they have sufficient experience. It's too dangerous. So what's the solution? And they propose just sitting and waiting for 18 years, doing nothing. Learning nothing! And then magically they are allowed to do everything. Of course there is no experience either. But those aren't considered children anymore, so why should paternalists care about them?

And that's how every next generation is dumber than the previous one.

The Good Intentions

If I'm a man going onto a bridge. And I don't care about it falling. I have my reason to do what I want to do. If you are trying to stop me, you annoy me very much. A warning is useful. Thank you for telling me to be careful. But I will still go onto the bridge if I want to.

Good intentions are good. But sometimes people don't think them through and we end up getting a lot of problems. Censorship almost always starts with Paternalism of some kind. But grows out of it into a totalitarianism. Restriction imposed for safety of morons end up making everyone's lives harder.

Freedom is important! So watch out for Paternalism!

Happy Hacking!

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  Erwinjitsu c:0


Freedom is cool, though a lot of the times it's also inconvenient. That doesn't mean freedom is "bad", but it rather means people need to accept some things when they are free. One of those things is responsibility.

  Blender Dumbass c:1


@Erwinjitsu so are you saying something along the lines of: Paternalism is more convenient than Freedom and a lot of people would rather prefer it?

  alkyilcycloalke c:2


Freedom is the ability to direct yourself with no actual intentional interference from other sentient beings. This, by definition, requires a sense of self. Since children have a limited degree of self, but increases as they age, they should have paternalism (from their parents) that lessens by degree until they are of an age of sufficient reason and self. The true problem is when authority figures can lessen their guidance when the person is gaining reason. Civil authorities are notoriously terrible at this, which is why it usually is best to keep this guidance of youngsters to the family unit, since that is where they are best known and evaluated by the parent(s).

This could be interpreted as why a family takes the responsibility of a child's actions. "He or she raised their child terribly, thats why he curses so much in school." They generally don't blame the child as much when they are younger, like 4 to 8. The parents are responsible, since they are the ones shouldering the child's freedom till he is sentient enough.

That being said, once a person has reached an age of sufficient reason to operate normally and safely in society, they should have reached freedom.

  Blender Dumbass c:3


@alkyilcycloalke I strongly disagree. If freedom was not important for children as young as new born babies, we wouldn't have laws prohibiting hitting children. An act of violence is an act of control over the other person's body. And therefor is not good. Countries without freedom like Russia have no such laws, since the country doesn't know what freedom is. Look at the other freedom, privacy! Child pornography is not good since it's a violation of a child's privacy. And therefor child's freedom. In such countries as Russia, storing such privacy violating material is not illegal. But in democracies you cannot be a dictator to the child in your house. Because the child should have the freedom!