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Comment by JaumeGreen | Hacker News Reader

200 years ago slavery was more extended and accepted than today. 50 years ago paedophilia, rape, and other kinds of sex related abuses where more accepted than today. 30 years ago erotic content was more accepted in Europe than today, and violence was less accepted than today.

Morality changes, what is right and wrong changes.

This is accepting reality.

After all they could fix a set of moral standards and just change the set when they wanted. Nothing could stop them. This text is more honest than the alternative.

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"Slavery was right 200 years ago and is only wrong today because we've decided it's wrong" is a pretty bold stance to take.

Not "slavery was right 200 years ago" but "slavery wasn't considered as immoral as today 200 years ago". Very different stake.

By definition if you're using the word "considered" you're making some claim that slavery is objectively bad. You can't simultaneously say that morality changes, that what is right and wrong changes, and then say "slavery though is bad objectively it's just people in the 1700s didn't consider it as bad as it is."

Don't you see how that seems at best incredibly inconsistent, and at worst intentionally disingenuous? (For the record I think 99% of people when they use a point like this just haven't spent enough time thinking through the implications of what it means)

Perhaps that statement could be read to imply the existence of an objective moral status, but I don't think societal "consideration" does in general. Does this statement? "200 years ago slavery was considered moral; now slavery is considered immoral."

I don't think it implies either is objectively correct, and perhaps this was the intended meaning of the original statement. It might appear to put weight on current attitudes, but perhaps only because we live in the present.

I think your right the statement in and of itself doesn't imply any morality. My issue was with these two sentences in close proximity:

> 200 years ago slavery was more extended and accepted than today...Morality changes, what is right and wrong changes.

In the context of the comment that's replying to (arguing for an objective, and if I can read between the lines a bit, unchanging moral truth) even if it's not explicitly arguing that slavery 200 years ago was fine, it is at least arguing that under some specific mix of time and circumstance you could arrive in a situation where enslaving someone is morally just.

I was explicitly trying to avoid making a personal judgment over the matter on the posts. I do have a negative opinion about it, but that was not of importance.

I don't know for sure how people considered slavery 200 years ago, I haven't studied enough history, but the slavery that is more commonly known as slavery was legal. That implies that at least more people accepted that than nowadays.

Nowadays that kind of slavery is frowned upon on at least on the first world.

Modern day slavery has plenty of aspects, and some of them are not considered bad by some part of the population, or not considered a modern iteration of slavery. Working full time for a job that doesn't pay you enough to survive and needing subsidies, not having enough time or energy to look for something better, is IMHO bad and slavery, while for lots of people it is the result of being a lazy person that needs to work more.

Is that situation bad? According to me, yes. According to some economical gurus, no.

Is that situation objectively bad? That is a question I am not answering, as, for me, there's no objective truth for most things.

The text is more convenient that the alternative.

But surely now we have the absolute knowledge of what is true and good! /s

Slavery was wrong 200 years ago; it is still wrong today. What changed is that the wrongness of slavery became more widely known.

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