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Comment by lern_too_spel | Hacker News Reader

You seem to have bought into fair and balanced horseshit. There are certain views that are morally superior to others, just as there are certain hamburgers that are better than others. Taking rights away from other people loosely based on ancient superstitions (the Bible says nothing about allowing gays to marry but says a lot about how to punish them -- the only reason Eich and his ilk aren't politically promoting the punishments is that our secular society would rightfully come down even harder on them then) is not something that should be a protected viewpoint, just as promoting the idea that Jews (as a race) should not have property rights is something that should not be tolerated.

Had Eich done something that was morally neutral, everybody would have stood up for his right to do that, as well they should. That's not what he did though.

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Why is it necessary to "come down hard" on people who express morally wreak (or even stupid) viewpoints?

Surely, putting forth a better argument or, at least, ignoring them is a far more morally superior response than suppressing their speech?

I've recently read about Bobby Sands (who was a IRA member who starved himself to death) and am reminded of that monk who lit themself on fire in protest.

I think an interesting question about these two people is why did their action have any impact? The authorities were against them and killing themselves doesn't "oppress" those authorities.

I think the opening paragraph of this book http://www.jstor.org/stable/3750951 is an interesting angle: martyrs against a cause illegitimize a cause.

If that is true, as I think it is, then it is crucially important to not victimize people no matter how wrong they may be. I think that the way to do that is, as I said above, to tolerate wrong viewpoints but respond to them or ignore them.

You think it's OK for a majority to say that racial Jews should not have property rights and then make it so? Eich achieved hos goal of writing oppression into the state constitution. Ignoring or tolerating promotion of oppression doesn't make it go away. (That's exactly the fair and balanced horseshit I was talking about.) Tolerating morally neutral actions is entirely different from tolerating morally bad actions.

Pretending that Eich's treatment for promoting oppression (or even the downvotes I've received for stating my views or you may have received for stating yours -- I've seen a lot of handwringing in this thread about maintaining multiple HN accounts and self-censoring themselves on HN as if that was some great horror) are in any way equivalent to actually taking away rights is another form of fair and balanced horseshit.

Suppose that everyone in the world (except Jews perhaps) believed that it WERE OK for them not to have property rights, then what would protect their property rights?

The truth is that what is right is decided by how well the arguments for it can convince people.

If you look back far enough, the arguments were: my army is stronger than you. As you get closer to the present, we tend to like using better arguments (the veil of ignorance for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance).

It's based on notions like the veil of ignorance that we can say maybe every human should have property rights lest the group we're part of today lose it when the balance of power shifts.

That's why I believe that jews should have property rights, but don't believe that advocating against what I believe should be stifled. I am confident enough that my argument is better than theirs to not need to prevent their speech if you prefer. I also don't believe that we should stifle: climate change denial, flat earthers, religious people, pro-life people and a host of other people that I believe are wrong.

You make a nonsense point (nobody is arguing for morality by majority rule) then refute it by pointing out that you have good arguments for advocating a certain morality. Then you make a straw man (nobody is arguing for stifling anybody).

At the core, you seem to agree with me that there are certain actions that we should be intolerant of. Things like murder we should not tolerate forcefully, and things like oppression, we should argue against strongly until they go into effect, in which case, other action is sometimes better.

Hmm, I thought thinking about my initial question would be enough to see my point from your perspective. Maybe it is.

You were, in your now flagged comment, arguing for stifling (or censoring if you prefer) people who, you believe, hold that kind of opinion.

The point I am making is that morality is only part of it. In practice, it doesn't matter that you're right if you're dead. You say that

> tolerating promotion of oppression doesn't make it go away

I'll answer that arguing with words without understanding the process that allows for people to agree to "fight" with words rather than weapons is even less likely to make bad ideas go away.

This won't convince you, I know, the tone of your replies shows an adversarial reading of my comments. But maybe one day you'll have a more skeptical approach to your own beliefs.

My now-flagged comment said absolutely nothing about censorship or stifling. It said bad actions shouldn't be tolerated. Again, what is bad isn't up for vote. It can be deduced logically -- see my other posts. Otherwise, why do people not follow the "extremes" in their religious texts?

You seem to hold a revisionist historical view that the civil rights movement was entirely unproductive, even though it was unpopular at the start (again, morality doesn't depend on the majority). Loudly pointing out bad actions works.

The funny thing about that now-flagged comment is that it was up to +5 points before it dropped fast. There must be an unwritten rule against calling out superstitions.

> It said bad actions shouldn't be tolerated.

What do you mean by not tolerating if not stifling? If you look at the Mizzou and Yale things, stifling is exactly the right word: "we're just walking forward", "we can't hear you" and others.

> You seem to hold a revisionist historical view that the civil rights movement was entirely unproductive, even though it was unpopular at the start (again, morality doesn't depend on the majority).

My argument isn't that it didn't work, but that you fail to understand why it worked.

It worked because the arguments were convincing, not inherently because people pointed to something and said "this is stupid".

It has nothing to do with being loud (in the literal sense that I understand you to mean it).

Perhaps a better way to say what I'm trying to is: I think that the reason you arrive at the "right" conclusion is coincidental. The approach is flawed and it does and will lead to nonsense sometimes.

Another way to show what I mean is by counter-example: if someone advocated for, say, racial tolerance because they argued that we can't know who's a Christian based on race, I don't care if we agree on the conclusion, the process is a big problem.

Once again, you're pretending I said things that I didn't actually say. I said that certain bad actions should not be tolerated. Where you get stifling from this, I don't know. In particular, your first post claimed that we shouldn't be intolerant of people implementing (not merely talking about) Biblical punishments on gays, which is what I claimed that our society rightfully would very harshly not tolerate, just as our society wouldn't tolerate government-sanctioned mass lynchings of blacks

Yes you did say actions in that last post. I'm fairly certain your flagged post argued for "coming down hard" on people advocating for certain things rather than doing things. I'm fairly sure, given the tone, that I would still disagree with whatever you mean by "coming down hard"/"not tolerating", but this is getting speculative so I think this is a moot point.

> Biblical punishments on gays

Where does that come from? Was that what Eich wanted?

As far as I know, there was no advocacy for violence (something we do punish but in a due process, legal manner).

Are you arguing that you see no difference between 'death to the sinners' and whatever notion of 'sanctity of marriage' Eich might have espoused?

> just as there are certain hamburgers that are better than others

There's nothing that objectively makes a hamburger better than another. It's all subjective, just as views are subjective. Some people like bread a lot, so they may want a really thick bun which could be overpowering to another person. Some people are vegetarian, while others cringe in disgust at a black bean burger. It doesn't make those hamburgers any better or worse than others, though.

This is very true. I knew a guy who only ate fast food, and he could not (or would not) eat at better restaurants. He simply did not like anything but the fast food hamburgers.

It's exactly like hamburgers. At the top, there are actions that are hard to distinguish morally, just as there are hamburgers that are hard to distinguish quality-wise.

But we can all agree that a hamburger with actual shit in it is worse than a hamburger from Smashburger, just as there are certain actions that are clearly morally wrong and don't need to be evaluated with some false fairness.

> But we can all agree that a hamburger with actual shit in it is worse than a hamburger from Smashburger

I'm sure that out of the 7 billion people living on our planet, at least one person genuinely likes the taste of shit. To them, this wouldn't necessarily be true (I've never had a Smashburger and I don't like the taste of shit, so I couldn't possibly make this comparison myself). Which is why it's not objectively worse. It's all based on the person eating the burger, because everyone has different likes and tastes. That's why there's never one burger option; everyone shockingly doesn't like the same things.

Eating a burger with shit in it will likely kill you. Should I have said cyanide instead to get the point across? The point is that there are some burgers that are clearly worse than others (use your own imagination if cyanide doesn't work for you), just as there are certain actions that are clearly morally worse than others.

> Should I have said cyanide instead to get the point across?

No, you should have used an analogy that actually works.

I can't help it of you don't understand the concept of an analogy. The form of this one is good X:bad X::good Y:bad Y. We're not dealing with GRE-level stuff here.

> Eating a burger with shit in it will likely kill you.

Preferences for death or risk of death are not exactly unknown, so, while that may be true, it isn't sufficient to establish the universal preference you've offered it to support.

> Should I have said cyanide instead to get the point across?

No, for the same reason. The problem isn't the example, the problem is that the point is wrong; whether or not one believes that an absolute morality exists (in whatever sense of "exists" makes sense for morality), you aren't going to any of its contents through universally-extent preferences, just as you won't for food, because preferences aren't universals.

Under what moral framework are you judging Eich? I can think of many ways what Eich did could be construed as morally neutral and/or morally positive.

Not that I think gays shouldn't have the right to marry. It's just that your idea of what makes something moral is horribly naive and self-serving.

Under the framework of cold rational logic. In what ways could Eich's actions be construed as morally positive without resorting to superstitions and other faulty logic?

You're absolutely right that my ideas are self-serving though. I am neither gay, nor black, nor a descendant of Abraham, but I am a human living in society. As such, I want to live as long as possible, and oppressing people to the point of ingesting cyanide is not going to help grow a scientific community large enough to keep me alive as long as I would like.

> Under the framework of cold rational logic. In what ways could Eich's actions be construed as morally positive without resorting to superstitions and other faulty logic?

Yeah that isn't an ethical framework. You were judging his actions under the framework of moral utilitarianism. The flaws with this can be found in a google search.

His actions could be construed as moral under a rule-utilitarian moral framework and a kantian virtue ethic framework. (The virtues being participating in politics and standing up for what you believe.)

> and oppressing people to the point of ingesting cyanide is not going to help grow a scientific community large enough to keep me alive as long as I would like

This is a straw man. Oppression of gays in the US amounted to not giving them the right to marriage and not having them be protected in the work place for their sexuality. Neither of which amount to "oppressing people to the point of ingesting cyanide".

Hilariously, the two justifications for Eich as you've presented them would paint Hitler as moral. As Feynman was fond of reiterating, there is a vast difference between naming something and understanding something, and you've illustrated his point perfectly.

As you're no doubt well aware, marriage rights encompass many other legal rights, and denying those rights is granting gays a form of second-class citizenship. This official form of discrimination combined with the private sector hate they receive for not being in a protected class causes gays ti have a higher rate of suicide than the rest of the population, continuing Turing's tradition.

>Hilariously, the two justifications for Eich as you've presented them would paint Hitler as moral.

First of all, neither are justifications. It was simply analyzing Eich's actions under a different moral framework as yours.

Second of all, yes, you could argue (this is the key word) Hitler's actions as moral (even though everyone would almost

Hilariously (not really actually) using your reasoning and your ethical framework you could also argue that paedophiles should not be discriminated against and that they deserve the right to sleep with and marry minors.

As society we don't want this so we choose to discriminate against child predators. Discrimination in this case is a pretty good thing.(I don't actually believe child predators should have this "right")

>As you're no doubt well aware, marriage rights encompass many other legal rights, and denying those rights is granting gays a form of second-class citizenship. This official form of discrimination combined with the private sector hate they receive for not being in a protected class causes gays ti have a higher rate of suicide than the rest of the population, continuing Turing's tradition.

I don't really understand what you are trying to say here. Yes, I'm aware of these things. They don't matter in the scope of this argument. You say that reason and logic drive your believes about what is moral but this entire section of the post I quoted is just an appeal to emotion.

Also don't you find it ironic that you can justify discriminating against someone because of their beliefs but you can't justify discriminating against someone because of their sexual identity?

And before you respond with an argument telling me you can choose what you believe. Can you really?

I think you're missing the point of the story. The point is, that unless you're tolerating something that you consider morally wrong or unethical, you can't really claim you're tolerant.

You're missing the point of my reply. Tolerance isn't good for tolerance's sake, and claiming that tolerating something that actively harms people is the same as tolerating something that is morally neutral is just fair and balanced horseshit that leads to Jews losing property rights and Gays losing rights in the state constitution.

There are certain views that are morally superior to others

Whose morals? Back in the 1800's in the South it was generally viewed as moral to have slaves. Was that right?

Secular morals. Owning slaves obviously doesn't pass the test.

As a secular person, your main purpose is to live a long healthy life because that's all there is -- secular people don't get brownie points in the afterlife for the bodycount of heathens they've racked up. You will live a longer life if you live in a society of educated people who can do the science to keep you healthy and don't want to kill you (because you've oppressed them in slavery, because they have no money, or because they're brain-damaged from lead poisoning).

> Owning slaves obviously doesn't pass the test.

You're at best begging the question here. In the South there were (horribly wrong) people who honestly and truly believed (incorrectly) that not only was it morally permissible to own slaves, but that it was morally necessary. They (wrongly, racistly) believed that the only way the "African race" could be saved from "savagery" was to be in captivity.

This argument is clearly stupid and wrong from a 21st century perspective. But it was honestly believed. Under your framework, a slave owner in 1800 would be correct to "come down hard" on an abolitionist. After all, the abolitionist would be promoting "clearly wrong" morals.

The idea that a majority should "come down hard" on dissenting ideas is inherently a conservative (if not reactionary) move. In the 1950s, a vast majority of the country (wrongly) thought that homosexuality was a toxic sin that could (stupidly) infect children who were exposed to it. If you gave that majority the power to "come down hard" on dissenting views, the gay rights movement would never have happened. (Yes, I'm aware that lots of people in the gay rights movement were punished by the majority -- that was bad and we shouldn't encourage it).

So long as you get to decide what's right and wrong it's easy. But imagine George Bush got to decide. Or ISIS. Or some other group you don't like.

Well said. Crude majoritarian morality has hole after hole that even its most thoughtful adherents can do nothing to defend. Why people continue to invoke it is beyond me.

Revisionism with some sloppy relativism mixed in. For you to believe your argument, you must honestly believe that at some point in the future, it will be secularly moral to remove rights for gays, remove property rights from racial Jews, enslave blacks, and conquer, kill, and rape.

The truth is that nobody believed it was morally right to keep slaves who wasn't benefiting from it and using your type of relativism to sloppily justify it to themselves.

You have no idea what secular means do you? Admit it. The Eastern Bloc was extremely secular. That doesn't prevented it from being quite oppressive.

Nobody is saying that the Eastern Bloc was secularly moral.

Please stop, both of you.

Because there is no such thing as secular morality. And morality is mostly fiction anyway. Usually determined by who won the last major war.

Ah, so killing isn't bad? You can call it morality or whatever other name you have for it, but there are actions that society shouldn't tolerate for entirely secular reasons.

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