Comment by marginalia_nu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by marginalia_nu | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think it's this black and white. 'Candide' makes a good argument against the other side of the coin, toxic optimism or whatever you want to call it. Horrible things absolutely do happen and ignoring this doesn't make things better.

Maybe the problem is an inappropriate amount of faith. Not in the religious sense of the word, but as in confidence in external things. The optimists have far too much, the cynics have far too little. Maybe we should look to the mean.

Having no faith at all offers up a breeding ground for corruption on both personal and institutional level. Having too much obscures it if it's already there.

> Your only moral obligation in life is to make this decision for yourself: Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be good?

Often the question that should be asked is "why aren't you doing the things you know you should do?" Most people already know what is good, yet they do other things instead out of sheer momentum of habit, or because they don't realize they had an option.

>Often the question that should be asked is "why aren't you doing the things you know you should do?"

Why is there a "should"? Is there a unique and universal way to determine what someone should do? Given the same situation two different people can act in two different ways. Is there a rule implying that one is right and the other is wrong?

By this I mean acting according to your own judgement. It's not an objective should, but a subjective one.

Moral incontinence is a problem most people will struggle a lot more with than convoluted scenarios involving trolleys.

Nothing of the sort is implied. Everyone can have their own should (or not, as the case may be). But if you know you should do something, presumably you're past such useless philosophising. I know I should be nicer to the people I love, and

> Why is there a "should"? Is there a unique and universal way to determine what someone should do? Given the same situation two different people can act in two different ways. Is there a rule implying that one is right and the other is wrong?

strikes me as a rather obtuse response to that.

In case someone reading this thread has never encountered this stance, I sincerely hold the belief that there are objective moral truths that we can discover with our senses and intuition.

What is the ends and purpose of these moral truths?

...work?

They're ends in themselves.

That is the meaning of life question that has been asked since the day the universe became conscious in the form of human kind.

From a game theory perspective, morality encapsulates behaviour that is viable over multiple interactions across long stretches of time.

Right, the question is then, why should we want behaviour that is viable over multiple interactions across long stretches of time?

Your question is big. The answer I've landed on is little. We're just little furry wiggly wombly tubes struggling against the inevitable pressures of entropy. This is true down to the most basic molecule than can replicate.

Objective moral truths stem from that. The unending dance with entropy. To be the belle of the ball, we also harness that entropic randomness and turn it into dances that are even more powerful.

I feel the urge to thrive and grow and improve. I find myself sympathetic to the expressions of that drive from all life. That is a priori, that emergent empathy that many of us are capable of. I see a neighbor crying, a homeless man sleeping rough, a fearful stranger, and I say to myself, "There but for the grace of God, go I." But I don't stop there, because I see my puppy, I see a bird in the sky, I see a crushed mollusk, a writhing worm, "There but for the grace of God, go I." We're many faces, but still, we're all dancing with the entropy.

Next is the question, "Will this action increase or decrease the entropy in the universe? To the many faces, is this the action of an ally or an enemy?"

Finally, we realize we could superheat everything into crystals and reduce entropy that way. The last vital factor is the synthesis of order and disorder: complexity. These are the fun dances. Art. Learning. Creation.

So, to find objective moral truths, our sieve consists of The Golden Rule, "Am I fucking things up more?" and "Am I making things more awesome?"

Right, but I just don't understand how you can generalize your subjective experiences to objective truth, especially in the face of people disagreeing. If a truth requires some particular perspective our outlook to become apparent, then it just isn't objective.

The assumption is that empathy is a priori. That's a phenomological sense, an alternative to "I think therefore I am." One step below that is "I feel, therefore I am," which applies to all sentient beings with the capacity for feelings.

Because when we get the opposite, our own behaviour has ultimately driven us into the ground and we end up in hell or dead.

Right, but some might consider the other end of the spectrum as also bad.

Extremely stable societies are often marked by low social mobility and oppressive social mores, yet they fulfill every check mark according to your definition of good. It would also deem the emancipation of slaves an evil deed, since it disrupts a stable pattern of social order that's extended for a long stretch of time.

I don't know if I would deem something like ancient egypt, which had a social order that persisted largely unchanged for several thousand years, one of the most stable societies known in history (also an oppressive theocracy), I don't know if that is my idea of good.

Either too much chaos or too much order are indeed failure conditions that appear in our history/stories/myths. So I'd not go to either extreme of that spectrum.

Merely persisting is not sufficient for something to be moral, but it is a necessary requirement. We need principles on how to behave in repeated interactions and situations over long periods, or bad things will eventually happen. That's part of the purpose of moral truths you were raising a question about.

I'd just point out that ancient Egypt had developed moral-sensemaking technology that were state of the art at the time. It's the best we as humans could do to live in a large ecosystem and we're standing on their shoulders. It's not surprising that we would find fault.

The pure game theory idea doesn't work because it won't be internally consistent -- we understand morality isn't supposed to vary from person to person depending on how powerful their social position is.

When you say we "understand" what it's supposed to be, what do you mean? That morality is an attempt to generalize required behaviour over different situations was the point. The utility of the morality project is that has the goal of preventing any situation from going to hell. That's what makes the game compelling to participants. From a selfish game theory perspective, the repeated interactions is the argument for it.

Our common understanding of the concept of morality is something that is universal. We don't accept that there should be a different morality for the king vs. the peasant.

Apply Rawls veil of ignorance.

> Is there a rule implying that one is right and the other is wrong?

most of the time, yes!

We are not living in a void, we live in societies, complex societies. with lots of rules, dos and donts, should and shouldn't.

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