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Robin Hanson's avatar

Nick, it isn't clear to me how wide a range of "western" paternalism David embraces. Germans allow legal prostitution, for example. Is Germany "western", and are laws against prostitution part of the "western" set? I suspect I do place more weight on dead people than he does, and/or have different opinions about what they would believe about us.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Robin, do you think that Balan can claim to agree with the vast bulk of contemporary Western opinion (and extending quite far beyond that since many other societies might see the paternalism we have now in our society as doing on balance more good than bad - I'm not sure whether most contemporary Muslims, Chinese, Africans, etc. would think that mandatory schooling, seat belts, not selling alcohol to minors, and the rest of it are a net bad for Americans). Does your disagreement with him hinge on your (a) placing a much greater weight than he does on the opinions of people who are dead, and (b) assuming that those dead people would believe that present paternalism is on balance bad?

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