Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

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Most human beings and human societies agree on the same general points of morality.

    - Killing -- Try really, really hard not to do this!
    - Lying -- Please try really, really hard not to do this!

Or there's George Carlin's formulation: "Really try hard to not be a jerk!" I think everyone has a pretty good idea of what this means, and most people agree on the broad outlines. The devil is in the details, of course. Then there's "Love thy neighbor as thyself." A pretty good general principle that most would agree on in the broad outlines. Again: Devil is in the details.

But the points I am making in these comments aren't really about details. In the broad outlines of morality, when someone starts proclaiming loudly that they are justified in being a jerk -- it's time to start getting very skeptical! This applies just as well to people, governments, and "activist" groups.

And by all means, please take some time to be a bit skeptical about yourself! Again, this applies just as well to people, governments, and "activist" groups.

I'd go bit further.

Let's assume everybody agreed with the "Really try hard to not be a jerk!" and everybody would have 100% similar general picture of what is moral.

Two people still interpret a situation from two points of view. Both making the judgement that the other guy is out of bounds. Which justifies some apprehension. But they both experience wrongful apprehension, which justifies pretty big apprehension. Which could result in full riot.

My point is that you cannot talk about ethics from individual point of view and expect to solve problems. You have to take into account societies as whole. Then consider with how it's done in practice. Ethical society cannot exist without good laws and good guardians for those laws. (And with 99% of population behaving good 99% of the time.)

Skeptical is not enough. Society has to be a instant jerk towards individuals who try to jerk around. Clear cut boundaries are needed, so you know to stay inside them.

I'd say there is no place for moral relativism inside a country. But between countries it's even necessary.

My favorite example:

1) Randomly divide people into two groups.

2) Ask everyone in the first group this question: "If someone sues you and loses, is it fair that they should pay your legal costs?" Most people will say yes.

3) Ask everyone in the second group this question: "If you sue someone and lose, is it fair that you should pay their legal costs?" Most people will say no. Even though it's the same fucking question.

That's why we need shared enforced norms :-)

I like this example and might steal it.

But I'd offer you a [bayesian] counter-argument: Say an HIV test is 99% accurate and responds positive on a randomly selected person. What's the chance they actually have HIV? About 5%! [0]. However, if you have prior reasons to believe you may have HIV, the chances are a lot higher than 5% given a positive test.

To tie that back to lawsuits, your participants in the study have their priors set so that they don't expect to engage in frivolous lawsuits towards anyone. However they will likely recognize that they could fall victim to a frivolous lawsuit, and if they're normal, then the only type of lawsuits they could imagine being forced on them is a frivolous suit.

Another way to say that is: probably 90% of the ridiculous lawsuits originate from 1% of the population. Then 99% of your participants will mentally model themselves as a sincere plaintiff (thus they shouldn't have to pay even if they lose), while a 1% frivolous rate is certainly high enough to make plausible the threat of being the defendant, and thus worthy of protection through legal fee reimbursement.

[0]: http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs199/lectures/34-bayes-rule.html

Yes, fair enough.

I feel like you missed the point of the article. While the world agrees that killing, or generally being a jerk is bad, we are hopelessly divided on the issues like the death penalty, honor killing of rape victims, applying the death penalty to the mentally disabled, use of drones in armed conflicts, etc.

As the grandparent comment pointed out, there is no objective source of morality on any issue. As the OP pointed out, most people don't loudly proclaim themselves to be jerks. Outside of sociopaths and those with mental disorders, most people lie, kill and hate because they think it's somehow the right thing to do. Or because they can rationalize acting in their own self interest to be somehow fair or in the greater good.

Though the article tried to end on a positive tone, I found it to be pretty disheartening. It's easy to say "Don't be hateful", but much more difficult to say "Don't do what you think is right". Ain't no solution for that.

How about, "The ends don't justify the means?"

What was done under the leadership of MLK and Gandhi had an acute awareness of how the instincts around "othering" could take hold of an activist group. I wish there was much more of that today.

There may be a moral concensus on lying, but that's probably more because the word itself has a negative connotation, not the act. The lies that are permitted are called "white lies" or "plausible deniability" (insert many other forms of political speech here).

As another example (from what I've understood about some Asian cultures), "no" is considered rude in some cultures. It's quite acceptable in those cultures to end a business conversation with "I'll get back to you on that" and then never do. They wouldn't even consider it lying, they would consider it "the right thing to do".

I think people have much more relaxed stance towards lying than you think.

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