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Comment by afgeneralist | Hacker News Reader

"Trying to define what should be meaningful for other people is pretty arrogant and an insular perspective on life." - I think this statement is lazy in that it's taking the cultural relativist approach. By this token, we shouldn't make judgment on female circumcision in Africa, or the one child rule in China. In their societies these practices have very important value but I think most of us probably feel like it's morally wrong.

I think we can argue there there is a world where there should exist universal qualities. I certainly wont knock the author for trying to argue video games inherently don't have the same value as say "going for a walk" and helping your family or community...

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The interesting thing about both of your examples, is that they themselves are both examples of people "defining what should be meaningful for other people." Female circumcision is a statement by a culture that sex should not be desired by girls. The one-child rule is a statement by a culture that quality of life for its existing members is more important than quantity of life for its hypothetical ones. In either case, individual members of the culture may disagree, but then will be forced to conform to the culture's mores anyway—that is what we find repulsive about those policies.

As long as, on an individual level, people are free to choose their own utility function (as long as that function doesn't stop other people from choosing and partaking in their utility functions), then nothing else really matters on a grand-er scale. To put it another way: "cultural relativism" is wrong, but only because there is theoretically a perfect culture that allows its individuals to have individual relativism of ethics with a minimum of friction between individuals. The best culture is the transparent one people don't define themselves in terms of.

'"Trying to define what should be meaningful for other people is pretty arrogant and an insular perspective on life." - I think this statement is lazy in that it's taking the cultural relativist approach.'

And the funny thing is, such statements come off as absolutist claims about how other people should not be making absolutist claims. I mean, isn't it pretty arrogant to declare someone else, um, pretty arrogant? :)

It's hard to criticize someone for criticizing someone, or to judge people for judging people.

"I mean, isn't it pretty arrogant to declare someone else, um, pretty arrogant? :)"

Isn't it then also pretty arrogant to mean that it is pretty arrogant to declare someone else pretty arrogant? ;)

Yup. And it's pretty arrogant to imply that it's pretty pretty arrogant to mean that it is pretty arrogant to declare someone else pretty arrogant.

I think this thread is heading for a stack overflow.

Anyway, I think a lot of these self-referential paradoxes have a simple resolution. Just refuse to play. I'll do what I want, and I'll ignore whether everyone else thinks it's justified or not.

What gives you the power to decide what is good and what isn't? People should define themselves by their own merits and what gives them the most utility.

What? Is someone claiming power over objective definitions of right and wrong? I hope you understand that just because right and wrong are subjective doesn't render the model useless. What if it just so happens that a lot of this marvelous "utility" that you mention comes about through a reasonable consensus on morality, brought about through persuasion?

s/lazy/existentialist

Universal right and wrong just isn't my thing. YMMV

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