33 Comments

Im curious about what you mean by complaining?

If you mean just expressing dissatisfaction then sure it is a generally a poor strategy and can make the complainer look weak. But if you mean a consistent campaign to ruin the offenders reputation then I'd say that is a very effective strategy, it won't fix the immediate problem but Id say having a reputation for retaliation is effective in preventing future unjust treatment.

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Complaining is a terrible strategy, I've found ruining the offenders life to be fat more effective. It never fixes the problem but it once you have a that reputation it does not happen again.

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Justice is related to rules. I think different groups have different rules, so the action of the "Other" group can seam unjust to "Us" but "Just" to "them".

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The more dearly-held and widespread a norm, the cheaper (individually) it is initiate enforcement of deviation. Group enforcement lowers individual costs, which in-turn increases adherence to group norms.

And Isn't that a key basis for norm creation itself? They are an emergent property of community cost/benefit relative to individual cost/benefit.

It seems the problematic cases are those where the we don't actually have convergence on clear norms, or have conflicting ones. In these cases, the costs don't necessarily clear.

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So your analysis ignores all the justices that never happened because of our hyper-just system? That's not how I read your post.

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It obviously depends on the case. I mean I think we can assume that everyone would complain if a coworker else just assumed they could stab them to death and try to take their stuff and job.

But the very fact that the deterrence succeeds means when you ask what percent of the time would you coming they never consider this case because it doesn’t happen.

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Too tortured?? It is utterly certain that many people give *some* thought as to whether they will get away with their injustice, and it is utterly certain that some instances of injustice *are* gotten away with while others are not. So the only question about reality is how often one is *correct* when one predicts one will get away with injustice. The closer that true value is to 100%, the closer this model is to reality. A model which considers the extreme value of *one* real-world parameter is wrong (as are all models) but hardly tortured, especially since the effect will still be there if that value is somewhat lower (e.g. at say 90%, it is still the case that much injustice is deterred yet most injustice that is actually perpetrated cannot be corrected).

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Yes, they would, initially, but would their complaints be as likely to be heard? And if they are initially unheard enough times, are they going to keep complaining? Considering what you see, here, and say, how many people would be as likely to listen to you as they might listen to, say, Justin Wolfers while he's engaging in some values-based coordination?

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Maybe complaining is something in which a little can go a long way? Most people can't really devote the amount of time spent at a full-time job to "complaining". Also, what does "complaining" even mean in this context? Writing blog posts and telling your friends? Making a police report? Hiring a lawyer and initiating a lawsuit?

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But rule-likers would complain more when rules are violated.

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Your primary audience may belong to the group of people who are more likely to prefer rules. This may not overlap as much with the portion of the population that get the most out of complaining about injustice.

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Evolution can't create a thirst that isn't satisfied under normal circumstances in the ancestral environment. Either we don't really want this or it's something that our ancestors did have routinely.

Not that routinely means always. For a thirst, like the desire for water, to exist it has to also be importantly absent in the ancestral environment much of the time.

The Simulacrum parts of and Simulacrum are about the game of first denying that something is missing and then denying that it was ever there. This game seems to relate to justice in particular, and to be associated with Freyd's 'betrayal blindness'

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I agree it is logically possible, but seems too tortured to believe without more concrete supporting evidence.

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Do you post this generic comment regarding every Twitter poll anyone ever does, or is there some particular reason you posted it about this particular poll of mine?

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It might help to ask more than one question, preferably on a cohort of people selected more fairly than a twitter poll. There is considerable selection bias to be had asking a question on a public forum. Those who bother to respond will not fit the distribution of your study base (which isn't defined here). A single question will control for zero confounding variables and allow exactly no ways to test if the question asked actually reflects the hypothesis being tested.

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Yes. I didn't say most, but I agree with that too, as I think the increase in injustice that would result from a total breakdown of social order would dwarf current levels in almost all environments.

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