Comment by Xavier on Eight Short Studies On Excuses · 2020-04-16T19:09:00.561Z · LW · GW

Would it be reasonable to apply the logical arguments considering religions here? (Music) fandom seems like a relatively new concept - unlike the well-established act of mourning the dead. It seems to come down to whether you put more emphasis on strong personal but pre-established feelings versus known well-established concepts.

You could argue a person using the death of their mother might have no emotional attachment to their mother but are still using her death as an excuse. While this is morally questionable, it still does not set a bad precedent for an exemption on the level of a population. While on the other hand, accepting the excuse of pre-established niche fandom seems to opens up a potentially very large list of exemptions - e.g. I convince the teacher that I’m a real pastafarian at the start of the year with the intent of using this as an excuse later for some set up unique event. There is no way for the teacher to tell the difference between this and pre-established fandom. A dying mother, however, seems to be a largely unpredictable event and the possibility of intentional abuse seems to be much lower.