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Maybe what we really need first is a new religion and ethics, one that would eliminate the "playing god" dilemma and enable faster progress in the right direction. It could picture us animals as insignificant and not worthy the attention of the creator of the universe unless we reach ourselves a certain level of intelligence, consciousness and empathy.

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We'd have to start by admitting that almost nobody has the faintest clue about ethics beyond simply having been brainwashed into believing whatever arbitrary ethics they believe. Just look at the nonsense and disagreement about abortion. There are so many arbitrary standards people use to advocate for allowing or forbidding abortions at various ages. In my country, they recently adjusted the legal age by a few weeks, from one arbitrary number to anther arbitrary number. Curiously, I've only met one person who advocated for "post-partum" abortion. I think most people simply refuse to allow themselves to consider that because they aren't making any attempt at being ethical and only want to reinforce their own culture or demonstrate to their peers that they're "good" people.

Yeah, you can see tribalism even here on HN in discussions on different operating systems or programming languages. We are an animal that is irrational, predatory and highly social by nature. Whether we team up to build something useful or to fight with the other tribe depends mostly on the social programming done by the institutions of power such as media, schools and churches.

These institutions also have the power to decide what defines "our" vs "their" tribe. Just the usage of the terms "pro-life" or "pro-choice" already indicates that someone identifies with a specific tribe as the language is an important part of the collective identity.

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