Today's post, Hot Air Doesn't Disagree was originally published on 16 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

 

"Disagreement" between rabbits and foxes is sheer anthropomorphism. Rocks and hot air don't disagree, even though one decreases in elevation and one increases in elevation.


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[-][anonymous]20

Physical systems that behave differently from you usually do not have factual or moral disagreements with you. Only a highly specialized subset of systems, when they do something different from you, should lead you to infer their explicit internal representation of moral arguments that could potentially lead you to change your mind about what you should do.

Adults do well to remember this applies to the physical systems called infants and children.

Systems proven to have an internal representation of fairness and able to generate de novo justifications shouldn't be assumed to belong to this category.

OTOH, I know many adults who seem to take this lesson to heart when it comes to other adults as well.