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Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

I'm a moral incompletist.

That is, no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure is capable of proving all truths about moral actions. Either moral systems are complete, or they are consistent. Consistency and completeness are requirements for optimization, so the idea of moral optimization is dead on arrival for me. It's simply not possible, and like the author one will drive themselves to insanity over trying.

Edit: I made an unfortunately error in the original version - accidentally mixing up consistent with inconsistent. My apologies for the confusion.

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That's a good way to phrase it, and something I agree with. I'd heard the phrase "epistemological modesty" a while back, and it goes nicely with this - I think a great deal of harm is done in this world by people looking at other people suffering and either convincing themselves or being convinced that there's a greater systemic reason why those people need to suffer. Epistemological modesty suggests whatever grand designs we're contemplating are likely wrong, moral incompletionism suggests they can never be fully right, and both together suggest it's immoral to ignore suffering today because of some imagined future for some other people.

> I think a great deal of harm is done in this world by people looking at other people suffering and either convincing themselves or being convinced that there's a greater systemic reason why those people need to suffer.

Is that the "just world hypothesis" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_fallacy ?

I’d argue most attempts aren’t actually attempts to do good — they’re justifications for doing wrong.

Eg, DIE as a justification for systemic antisemitism in employment and education.

> moral incompletionism suggests they can never be fully right

Yes. My conclusions are twofold.

1. Attempting to create a complete and consistent moral framework is a fools errand. There will always be either moral gaps (cases that are outside the moral framework's ability to judge), or moral inconsistencies (cases where we have two incompatible moral conclusions).

2. Attempting to render a moral framework invalid by either pointing out its incompleteness or its inconsistency is not meaningful - since all moral frameworks are susceptible to one or both of these flaws. Therefore our justification for deciding the virtues of a moral framework cannot be that it is consistent nor complete - rather it has to be something else entirely.

We have to accept that there are unknowable or conflicting moral facts and each of these results in moral ambiguity either by absence or excess. This is independent of any particular moral framework (Yes even yours dear reader).

Oh wow, this puts words to an insight I've had and lived by for a long time.

I think I'm not just a moral incompletist but also a moral inconsistentist.

My take on the trolley problem is that while it's "best" in some sense to throw the lever, it's not wrong not to. And generally the goal should be "tend towards greater than zero" instead of "maximize morality points". Missed opportunities for moral behavior count as 0 and carry that neutral emotional valence instead of being a negative thing to agonize over.

>Either moral systems are complete, or they are inconsistent.

So you mean "incomplete or inconsistent"? It sounds like this is what you meant.

Then I disagree. Two examples of a complete and consistent (and computable) moral system:

* everything is good

* everything is evil

d'oh. Thank you, You're right. Edited to reflect what I was trying to say.

It's actually still not exactly right - should be "Either moral systems are incomplete, or they are inconsistent".

Here's an example of a both incomplete and inconsistent Moral system: - Petting dogs is good - Petting cats is bad - Petting dogs is bad

I see, what you're getting at. Yes. Thank you. Unfortunately, I'm no longer able to edit. I appreciate your patience, and help understanding the difference.

Those are not moral systems, they're sentences with undefined meaning. "Good" and "bad" need to be defined, they can't exist independently, like some intrinsic property of the universe (say, like the fine-structure constant). One could say that's the essential purpose of any moral system: to define what "good" and "bad" mean.

> Those are not moral systems, they're sentences with undefined meaning.

My biggest gripe (& source of hatred) with this reasoning is that you can do this infinitely without any remorse. It's a black hole, wherein all effort becomes wasted because the other side refuses to pin down definitions, and instead goes "nuh uh, not like that" infinitely.

But fine then. Here's what I think they're trying to do.

Given a universal set encompassing all actions (defined as A):

- All actions within A are permitted without question, and are deemed to be unquestionably positive to everyone, without exceptions.

- All actions within A are forbidden without question, and are deemed to be unquestionably negative to everyone, without exceptions.

> One could say that's the essential purpose of any moral system: to define what "good" and "bad" mean.

Again, refer back to my utter hatred towards universal moral relativism.

> "Good" and "bad" need to be defined, they can't exist independently, like some intrinsic property of the universe (say, like the fine-structure constant).

Side note: Deriving from current physics, the universe deems maximum entropy as a moral imperative, and thus it can be reasoned that the destruction of all matter is morally good from the universe's perspective, including the destruction of all living life. By continuing to expand the universe & increase entropy, the universe has chosen to take such a moral stance.

It can thus be concluded that genocide, in accelerating towards maximum entropy, is deemed morally good by the universe. QED.

> the universe deems maximum entropy as a moral imperative

There is no necessary connection between entropy and morality, it is actually you who has put that connection there, hence proving the parent's point that good and evil are in the eye of the beholder; this is your personal view on entropy, not a universal one.

> "Good" and "bad" need to be defined, they can't exist independently, like some intrinsic property of the universe.

I'd argue the opposite from empirics. The function of a moral framework is to essentialize good and bad so that it appears as an intrinsic property of the universe. All moral frameworks do this.

This is going to get both a bit technical and sociological, but taking a page out of Burger and Luckmann, the idea that good and bad are essential universal properties of actions is definitionally reification. I'd add that even if good an bad aren't directly essentialized, they are grounded in properties that are. Moral facts cannot escape the Münchhausen trilemma.

> Either moral systems are complete, or they are inconsistent.

That is interesting. I will be meditating if I can fully subscribe… maybe, but still not sure. What I can say, is that when I was 20 I thought I could clearly say what was right or wrong, then when I was 30, I had to change everything, then with 40… so yeah…

Good point. People tend to say we mellow with age, I think it's that we have more experience that can help us grow more wise. For myself, in my mid-20s, I became a Christian and fell into the trap of religious perfectionism. In my mid-30s I began to see some cracks in what I was being told. (skipping forward) I now understand, in my mid-60s, that God doesn't demand perfectionism, but effort. When I fail, I just get back up and continue to believe that I'll do better next time, knowing there will likely be several more next times.

Hears very very similar to my experience, but still not in the 60's :)

There was a commercial on TV, it was in a barber shop. One guy talking to the barber: "When I was 20 I thought I knew everything, then I got married. At age 30 I thought I knew it, but then I got a baby. With 40 I started to think I was almost there, but then my father died. At 50 again, I thought I was finally understanding life, but then the kids left home. Now I'm almost 60, and finally, this time, I think I know something about life." At that moment an old man on the back stands up and interjects "I'm 85, can you explain it to me, because I still have no idea!"

As if there could be a complete moral framework without the power to express Peano arithmetic.

I like this as a joke, but if your moral questions involve natural numbers in any way and your moral framework does not accommodate Peano arithmetic, then it is incomplete. :)

I am mostly joking, but I do think that if just about any logical framework is provably incomplete, then completeness is a lot to ask of a moral framework. So yes, what you said.

Belief systems generally lack properties of identity to prove anything by logic or rational method.

The first thing you need to prove anything is an objective unique definition, which isn't generally possible in the realm of the mind for all people, because we generally lack knowing or sufficient perception, making comparisons subjective.

There could be optimization towards minimizing objectively destructive acts (evil), and the blindness associated with evil people , through rational objective practices and measures. Evil people being those who commit evil acts while blinding themselves in acts of self-violation, to the consequences of their actions; repeating them.

Quite a lot of people today are no longer capable and fall to delusion because they were indoctrinated with false education and frameworks of thinking following a critical turn.

When the insane are running an insane asylum, everyone in there dies from starvation, its just a matter of time waiting for the right circumstances.

Which is just another way of saying, as is the judeo-christian doctrine, that the ultimate good is transcendent.

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