Difference between revisions of "Talk:RBE10K/Contributors/Agreements"

Revision as of 14:21, 24 February 2013

Comments on agreements

• "I pledge to frequently seeking information to challenge my powerful convictions"

This will probably lead to excluding Christians (among others). I would opt not to exclude religious individuals but instead integrating them in our community and relying on the community to gradually teach these people a habit of challenging convictions. Going the easy way might be considered a missed opportunity.

• "I agree to accept the wisdom of the collective in this project (i.e. overwhelming consensus rather than the majority) even when I personally disagree with a decision."

This is the weakest of the bunch to me. A little analogy for clarity. Three people want to watch television, one doesn't. Course of action: watch television. Now it happens a second time, and a third, course of action for fourth time: don't watch television. Example two: three people want to abuse fourth. Okay, superfluous but added for completeness.

So what I am saying is you can't rely on these kinds of rules. You have to find a way where all the parties are made happy: three people watch television and the fourth does something else in a separate room. An rbe should very much be about overcoming the first, scarcity type, situation, and create the second, everybody wins, situation. When there is scarcity you have to resort to political solutions (political in this case meaning, who gets what). We have to overcome this using planning and reason.

• "I respect any adult individual's freedom for self-determination, even if I have reason to believe they're self-harming."

In the (rare) case a person would pose a life and death threat to himself, the condition (drug abuse, suicidal behavior, psychosis) should be extensively discussed as well as the motive of the person intervening as well as the way this person has gotten the power to do so. Great care has to go in examining power structures and psychological characteristics of the people involved.

Positive psychology says that the problem such a person is facing is a lack of positive health, i.e. a lack of joy, exercise, art, achievement, belonging, competency etc. (sources: Alfie Kohn, Tal Ben-Shahar)

Agreements vs Rules

Rules tend to be associated with a Ruler (monarch) or with game rules (breaking them is cheating), or social Moral.

Agreements, on the other hand, can be offered for either consent or dissent (see [[w:Consensus_decision-making#Agreement_vs._consent|]]. Agreements are there to be consented, not necessarily personally agreed to them. Breaking an agreement does not incur in a penalty, or is considered cheating, but more of an antisocial behaviour (as per the expectations on behaviour by general consensus).

Therefore, it is important to make a distinction between rules and agreements, and avoid using any language that would suggest authority in a RBE system.

Restrictions versus No restrictions (coercion versus no coercion)

Scientific method = present evidence. Evidence supporting Restrictions: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2012/12/Legalised-prostitution-increases-human-trafficking.aspx Summary: human trafficking is higher in countries where prostitution is legal.

wouter.drucker (talk)