[ExI] Construction of in-groups was Re: Unilateralist

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 6:22 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> My rule of thumb is to tolerate those who tolerate me, and by transitivity
> try to tolerate those they tolerate if they try to tolerate me transitively.
> The result is a giant connected component of tolerance that seems to include
> most fair-minded people.

### In other words, a club of nice people. This is essentially the
procedure I use to construct my own in-group: all you need to become a
member is to be committed to respecting my property and the property
of those who respect it (hence transitivity). Of course, I am
committed to respecting the property of my in-group members which
differs greatly from my attitude towards the property of out-group
members.

>
> Maybe one can do the same thing with people who are "rational" in the sense
> that I judge their reasoning and aims to be a good enough approximation of
> rational, even if we disagree on values.
>
### In other words, a club of reasonable people - but the question is,
do you let in persons who are not tolerant of you, or do you exclude
them a priori, even if they are highly rational?

Also, another issue is of deliberation versus decision - Whose inputs
are a legitimate basis for updating your priors? Whose inputs should
modify the list of allowed/disallowed actions issue by the in-group?

These are interesting questions. All nazis are my enemies but many
were not stupid, which is why it's reasonable to use the knowledge
they contributed in many fields. But on the other hand, allowing nazis
to have a say in what should be done doesn't feel right.

My guess is that the League of Reasonable Men should include all who
think clearly but are not grossly perverted in their aims. Minor to
medium differences in values should be tolerated (e.g. whether to eat
meat or not) but major differences (e.g. whether it's OK to kill
people to protect animals from being eaten) should prompt exclusion
from all meetings. And knowledge gained from the evil ones should
impact what we believe in but not what we want to achieve.

Unfortunately, any LRM willing to issue *me* a membership card is not
likely to grow large....

Rafal