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Comment by bayindirh | Hacker News Reader

> To be clear, by "X" you mean "amoral" and "y" you mean "moral"?

It can be anything. It's intentionally X & Y, not X & !X or a more concrete word. Put whatever you fancy. Democratic, White, Sunny, Oreo...

I don't take sides or make a suggestion. I do not suggest that we should go to the lowest denominator but, we shall aim for much higher. OTOH, entropy loves lowest common denominator and drives everything down. Lowest prices in cost of quality. Chaos for minimizing energy, etc. We're trying to reverse natural chaos in many areas and it's worth it IMHO, btw.

For the same reason there are no country names in my comment. Fill the ones you want. My comment implies nothing. It's the readers' bias which puts USA/Russia/China/Moral/Ethical/Democratic/Totalitarian.

I see a lot of polarization in the world and everyone is claiming to be the good guys. We can improve when we accept that we're only guys and work upwards from there.

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Your comment is in reply to a comment about China, which is why I referenced China. (But if you wish to say your point is abstract, then my comment also applies equally well in any direction - I don't think China should use the US's misdeeds, which are plentiful, as justification for their misdeeds either!)

I am unconvinced that abandoning the attempt to be the good guys will lead people to be good. I believe it will only allow people to be bad guys without feeling bad about it. While claims to be moral have of course been used by many bad guys through history, the correct response is to argue convincingly that they're immoral, not to give up the idea that morality is a worthwhile standard.

Or, in other words, I believe morality is qualitatively different from any of those other categories you list. If a store chooses to sell Chips Ahoy instead of Oreos, that's just a question of taste; if a store chooses to sell cookies filled with razor blades and arsenic instead of Oreos, that's a different matter entirely, and we are not obligated to accept it because we've accepted that stores can sell Chips Ahoy.

The comment wasn't about China when I first wrote it. It expanded a lot in 1-2 edits. In all honesty, I didn't plant any implicit meaning into my comment.

I'm not suggesting abandoning the intention of being the good guy. Instead, I suggest to stop using it as a shield or plausibility cover for misdeeds. Instead I suggest the viewpoint of "Hey, we're trying to be good, but we fail sometimes. Let's accept it and collectively try to construct a better good, which is fair and equal to everyone, as much as possible." I think this is workable and can be iterated upon to make a better world (I know it's very hard, but it's not impossible).

Morality and ethics is universal. They're hugely important values to build upon, but interpreting them according to one's desires or in a subjective light, without empathy, makes them hollow. Again, a lot of misdeeds can be conducted by abusing these very important values.

I deliberately don't give any examples, because the examples may derail the conversation and take the spotlight to the examples themselves. All possible examples and evaluation of them is left to the reader, as a multi-faceted mental exercise.

Hope this clears my intentions a bit.

All right, that's fair - I think that approach leads to something like like, country A should not do morally-questionable action M, nor should country B, and if country A chooses to do it anyway, this shouldn't justify country B saying "Well why can't we" - country B should stick to its position and criticize country A. I'd agree with that.

(I originally read your comment as saying that it is unfair for country B to be enjoined from action M if country A is engaging in it, and I think other commenters did too. I do absolutely agree with the goal of collectively constructing a better good in a fair and equal way, holding everyone to that standard, and expecting that people will fail but it's worth trying to meet that standard nonetheless.)

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