Hacker News Reader

I'd rather imagine a world where the public servants believe in adherance to the standards of ethics befitting of a nation who justifies its actions by claiming moral high ground.

I'm not afraid of al Qaeda because, as our illustrious president said, Americans refuse to be terrorized.

When our public servants can perjure themselves before Congress, then they are fitting of the description morally bankrupt.

Some may say that Clapper was merely lying to preserve state secrets, but he didn't have to lie about anything he felt uncomfortable speaking on, he could have simply said, "I can't talk about that," which would have been the truth.

Perhaps your in-laws are comfortable being lied to by our public servants, however I am not.

> dismissing anyone who interprets the 4th amendment differently as "morally bankrupt.

If you get to the top rank of any government agency, you have a moral responsibility to understand and respect constitutional law.

The 4th amendment was not instantiated so it could be interpreted at will by whomever is currently in power. Doing so is the exact opposite of acting morally in the context of ruling over a democratic society.

That is the very definition of a republic:

    A republic is a form of government in which affairs of state are a
    "public matter", not the private concern of the rulers.

> The 4th amendment was not instantiated so it could be interpreted at will by whomever is currently in power.

It has to be interpreted to be applied in any event. That's why rayiner mentioned 'narrow scope' in his hypothetical.

In this actual case it's not that Gen. Alexander decided the 4th Amendment doesn't apply, it's that Gen. Alexander managed to get a lot more people than himself, in all 3 branches of government, to agree that legal precedent would make systems such as being used at the NSA legal.

Now we can argue that something simply being legal isn't actually carte blanche to go do it (e.g. rayiner has said as much in a different topic, that the law isn't meant to withstand everyone to try to push its boundaries all at once).

But we can also argue that someone with a task T should take advantage of every available tool at their disposal to finish that task. This is the tack taken by those who say that Google/Facebook/etc. have no culpability for not paying more taxes, as long as they avoid doing so by legal means.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that this WaPo piece is actually more concerning than news of PRISM, data collection, etc. I assume the NSA is collecting data, but I assume also that senior NSA leaders would be aware of why we do not concentrate power in the hands of individuals, and why we do not try to 'merge swimlanes' of functions.

> If you get to the top rank of any government agency, you have a moral responsibility to understand and respect constitutional law.

Sure. But you don't have a moral responsibility to take the broadest possible view on Constitutional protections. It's one thing to ignore the 4th amendment. That's bad. It's another thing to reasonably conclude that the 4th amendment was intended to keep police from breaking into peoples' houses, not to keep the government from collecting information that people voluntarily handed over to third parties.

The fact that these people actually believe that they need this access to catch terrorists is scarier than if they were just doing it to grab portions of a budget.

I tend to agree that it would be easier to persuade people if we used words like "cognitive bias" (with examples of how this affects everyone, even us) instead of inflammatory combative words like "morally bankrupt".

Imagine a world where every person is controllable by the government based on surveillance data. They can and they will find issue with anyone they want, and if they are not vulnerable, then their family and friends.

My problem is not with fighting terrorism, but with using this data for all sorts of police and state actions, in the benefit of whoever happens to be controlling access. It's another power amplifier.

We already have politics and money to empower a select few, add massive data to the list. How is this going to work? How is this data going to be used and by whom?

Honest question: do your in laws genuinely believe there have been dozens of planned terrorist attacks in recent history, and all but one (the marathon bombers) of them have been thwarted by the NSA/CIA/etc?

What were the values and priorities of someone like J. Edgar Hoover? His secret dossiers fit neatly inside a standard office cabinet, just think what he could have done with PRISM data.

J Edgar Hoover looked so hot prancing around in his "Throw Me Down And Fuck Me" Big Red Pumps.

>Is it possible to disagree with someone about the appropriate scope of surveillance without their being a "morally bankrupt individual?"

Nope.

Especially if they are head of some secret service.

Being "morally bankrupt" is on the job description.

"Imagine a world where most want to... x"

What a majority want or do not want is entirely orthogonal to whether it's moral or not.

>What a majority want or do not want is entirely orthogonal to whether it's moral or not.

Only if you believe in god.

For the rest of us, morals are created by society.

I don't think its irrelevant to the morality of a public servent when the people prioritize one thing over another and he acts accordingly.

Different people can have conflicting morals. If the majority thinks something is moral, it's moral for the majority.

I think relativistic morality has it very wrong.

I mean, surely you don't accept that killing Jews can ever be considered moral, or owning slaves, or cutting genitalia of little girls is moral just because a local majority happens to think that it is moral. In this day and age, with having gone through the Enlightenment with having such an abundant supply of literature on psychological sciences we can more or less reasonably agree on what is moral and not: physical and emotional pain is bad -- we know these things intuitively, we learned it over thousands of years -- fire bad, skin being cut bad, seeing my brother get killed bad, hugging good, we don't need human customs, politics, or some piece of paper dictate what is moral or not.

See here Sam Harris better argue for an absolutist morality informed by science: http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_...

I think all intelligent people should aggressively campaign the idea of absolutist morality to all ends of the earth.

>I mean, surely you don't accept that killing Jews can ever be considered moral, or owning slaves, or cutting genitalia of little girls is moral just because a local majority happens to think that it is moral.

What he or I believe don't matter at all.

If you were a southern, back in the slavery days, statistical chances are you would find it moral too.

>In this day and age, with having gone through the Enlightenment with have such an abundant literature on psychological sciences we can more or less reasonably agree on what is moral and not

The Germans that did those things during WWII not only have been through the englightenment but their country was one of the major contributors to it's whole development.

So, you'd be surprised.

>physical and emotional pain is bad -- we know these things intuitively, we learned it over thousands of years

Yes, and then they tell you "oh, but we only did it to save more lives". Or, "yes, it's bad, but we're doing it to the enemy".

Germany's Enlightenment was the most abstract and apolitical, compared to France or Britain, and exemplified by Kant, and tracts like "Critique of Pure Reason".

The majority of the figures of "Classical Liberalism" were from Britain. France also had political figures like Rousseau, but they tend to somewhat more Romanticism and less practicality.

Germany's tradition of antisemitism owed most to Martin Luther, who explicitly envisioned a genocide/enslavement of Jews in his "On The Jews and their Lies", a book beloved by Hitler.

Let's see. In my system of morals, different people are allowed to have different morals. In your system of morals they are not. You are not okay with my morals. I am okay with your morals, as long as they don't infringe too badly on my own. I certainly understand that you have them. I suspect that absolute anything is going to be a problem eventually. I know that I'm very unlikely to be able to change your morality, so why pressure you?

By the way, I don't think it's moral to call another person's morality horseshit. Your system of morals says this is okay. We have a small conflict there. No amount of science will convince me otherwise.

Basically I believe it's legitimate for morals to be defined by individuals on the basis of their experiences in life. Yes, we know most of them intuitively.

"By the way, I don't think it's moral to call another person's morality horseshit. Your system of morals says this is okay. We have a small conflict there. No amount of science will convince me otherwise."

Hold your horses! He can perfectly well find it immoral to call your morality horseshit, and be conscientiously acting immorally!

Yeah, okay, and I knew that too. Intellectual dishonesty.

I didn't call your morality horseshit, I meant to just come down on the philosophy of relativistic morality itself. I've revised the original comment to make it a little more civil.

> I am okay with your morals, as long as they don't infringe too badly on my own.

If you continue down this route you're going to have instances in which severely deranged individuals can agree that killing people is good. Or, to give you a less stretched example: just because two newcons can agree that it's the best decision to just cut all Social Security to seniors who're unable to work because of their declining health, it does not make that decision a moral one.

I believe in letting individuals define their own morals, so you were at least calling a significant piece of my morality horseshit. But anyway, civility appreciated, no harm done.

You and I probably share similar morals about many things, but I don't believe science has all the answers. The difficult moral questions come down to a choice between a rock and a hard place. How can science possibly tell us whether the death penalty is moral, for example? On the one hand you have the idea of the right to life, on the other hand you have the idea of justice for families of the victims. There is going to be pain either way. Just because I am anti-capital punishment and I come up with some scientific experiment to demonstrate that this is valid does not mean that I cannot understand the positions of the people who are pro-capital punishment. If my family was murdered perhaps I might change my mind. Just because someone murders innocent civilians abroad, does that mean we need to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers to stop them? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Abortion is thornier still. How do you possibly begin to answer these questions with science?

> I think all intelligent people should aggressively campaign the idea of absolutist morality to all ends of the earth.

"But this time, it's different, because we really are the chosen ones!"

> I think all intelligent people should aggressively campaign the idea of absolutist morality to all ends of the earth.

I just noticed this, and it's quite interesting by itself. That we should campaign like this is a moral judgment. Can you explain how absolutist morality arrives at the conclusion that we should campaign for absolutist morality? How is this conclusion informed by science?

I base the premise of this action to maximization of humanity's well-being.

Would the woman who gets killed by her father in an act of 'honor killing' because she was raped be well-served by their society being educated that it's wrong -- despite what their local morality has to say about it? Of course. It means she might have not been killed if her local community didn't have a corrupt sense of morality.

Let's assume that you're right and that you can conduct scientific experiments to determine whether a specific moral is good or bad. For example, let's assume that it's possible to set up an experiment to determine whether the moral value that says "we should use honor killing" leads to more harm than good.

The question is, how do we know that we should do the experiment? How can science provide us with the moral value that says "we should do science"? How do we know scientifically, absolutely, that more knowledge is good for the well-being of humanity? Where is the falsifiability?

Well, as I said, the goal is maximization of humanity's well-being (the two key ideas in this are: longevity and happiness). In order for the human race to survive in the long term we would have to strive for social sustainability as well as environmental sustainability.

As we're talking about social sustainability: to succeed in even small groups we work together as a team... no one man can, for example, make a computer. One man doesn't know how to process the sand, how to make a processor, and on top of all that create high-level programs with good UI. Ligltly implicit within team work is good human relationships... it sort of goes hand-in-hand I think.

Killing people, depriving them of freedom, etc. all strain humans' happiness and survivability.

If you are interested in exploring this in greater detail, I highly recommend giving Sam Harris' book, _The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values_, a read: http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Valu...

I don't think I was clear because it seems like you missed my question. The question is not whether science can determine human values. The question is how do we know that we should use science to determine human values? This is a moral judgment, but I don't believe science can tell us the answer.

Do you see what I mean? If the moral value that we should use moral absolutism based in science cannot be provided by moral absolutism based in science, then it isn't moral absolutism because at least one moral comes from outside science.

> The question is how do we know that we should use science to determine human values?

What else should we use? Because we've used religion before, that didn't work. So, I suppose when I say that science should be our moral compass, I really mean looking at existing evidence and data that tells us what is good for us and what isn't, how we should do certain things, how should we not do other things, and so on.

A stated long term goal is survival of humanity, that I'm just accepting on an a priori basis. And then science tells us that preserving the human race sort of comes down to working as a team and spending our time productively, happily, and judiciously -- here on earth and in worlds beyond this one. A natural consequence of that is education -- we should educate people so that they don't kill people unjustifiably. Some rule of law is important for self-preservation, so we can rest easy that we won't also end up getting killed over someone's twisted sense of morality.

Okay first of all, the word science really only refers to performing experiments to determine the truth of falsifiable hypotheses.

For example, climate change studies are not based on falsifiable science because you cannot do experiments with the entire earth, but nevertheless many of us believe we need do something about carbon emissions anyway. So moral absolutism based on science cannot tell us what to do about climate change. It's tricky.

But second of all, let's assume you really can answer everything with a scientific experiment. We might come up with an experiment to find a way to maximize productivity. The problem here is, how do you determine what the word productivity means? It might be possible to do this, but this is not a word that can be given meaning by a scientific experiment. The same goes for other measures of well-being such as happiness and justice. How do you do a scientific experiment to find out if it's ethical to conduct a scientific experiment? You can't!

So the point is you can use science, but you need something outside of science too. Science is not a complete replacement for religion; atheists still need to get at least some of their values from somewhere else.

In my experience, introspection and reflection on my own life and a willingness to ask questions about everything despite what the popular ideas are has led to the development of my morals. But some of my morals came about simply because I tried things out, because I spoke to people with different morals from my own.

I hope you see what I mean. Science can certainly be valuable. But it cannot be absolute. Science cannot tell you how to make a difficult choice, because difficult choices do not have right answers. Science cannot tell me that I should respond to you - it might be a waste of my time and your time, there is no way to know. But you are reasonable and polite and I am here so there you go, and it doesn't conflict with my own morality.

I think we're getting bogged down in a game of semantics. I do not think it is such a horrendous misuse of the word 'science' when I mean we can use the results of experiments and sometimes loosely (but rationally and in a learned manner) use them as a basis of our actions, morality, and rule of law. Denotationally the word 'science' implies and includes questions of experimental falsifiability, but I see many smart individuals saying 'science tells us climate change is happening' and I don't think they're wrong when they say that -- we may not have found by science that it is true, but we're sure enough that it is true. To reject climate change on such a basis is not so different from people denying the 'theory' of evolution, because "noooo, it's just a theory you see". They are right by this account of technicality... but that doesn't stop us from accepting this theory as being "good enough to go with".

That said, I'm heading to sleep for now. If you would like to continue this discussion in e-mail you can let me know your e-mail address and I can reply to your other questions (which I would have answered/re-answered if I were not so sleepy).

I'm happier to talk on HN.

Listen, I'm not saying to reject the studies about climate change, I'm saying that to accept the studies about climate change and let them affect your morals you have to implicitly accept that falsifiable science can't tell us everything we need to know to create our morals.

The point is that absolutism insists on yes or no answers to moral questions - that's what absolute means, there is only one answer - but only falsifiable hypotheses can give yes or no answers, and often our morals need to come from sources that are not falsifiable, e.g. climate change studies. That's why I reject scientific moral absolutism; not because falsifiable science is bad - it's extremely important - but because it's not enough.

" we know these things intuitively, we learned it over thousands of years -- fire bad, skin being cut bad, seeing my brother get killed bad, hugging good, we don't need human customs, politics, or some piece of paper dictate what is moral or not."

We don't know ALL these things intuitively. Some we do, but some are purely based on customs, tradition, or arbitrary interpretation of conflicting rules (trolley problem). Which is why FGM is moral in some places, but not all.

I think you're very right here and I certainly agree, I should have instead said that human intuition goes a long way -- but we should capitalize on it with a more scientifically informed view.

Being misled by morally bankrupt people does not constitute moral bankruptcy, no.

> "These people are not all "morally bankrupt." They just don't share your values and priorities."

Morals is basically "values + priorites". This is like saying "these people don't do X, instead we see physical laws acting on matter and energy".

In summary: It might be possible to disagree without employing sophistry, but so far I didn't see anyone do it.

> Morals is basically "values + priorites". This is like saying "these people don't do X, instead we see physical laws acting on matter and energy".

Just because morality involves values and priorities doesn't mean that every disagreement about values and priorities is a moral issue.

Just because morality involves values and priorities

I didn't say involves, I said "is". As in, consists of. Having values without acting on them is pointless, so you need priorities for the whole morality package. You do know that "values" without qualifier is short for "moral values", right? Right...

Also, just because you bring up your in-laws doesn't mean it suddenly has anything to do with them, other than you trying to make it about them. I just followed you into this dead-end because I'm fucking tired of people using themselves or their loved ones as hostages for abuse of power on a massive scale. Just because you or they fall for something doesn't make it right, and if yourself and your in-laws are all you have, then you have nothing.

Since you asked: I don't think they're being that bright, but to make really sure I'd need you to ask them what they know about WTC7, Al Quaeda in the 80s, and just exactly how much Saddam Hussein and Al Quaeda were in love with each other. Just for starters, you know? Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity, after all. Anyone who is "afraid of Al Quaeda", in 2013, needs at least to turn off the TV.

Were people who genuinely believed Hitler was great and wouldn't harm a fly "morally bankrupt"? No, but the result of their simple-mindedness sure as fuck had evil consequences for others, and to just dismiss it as having different values and priorities, well, as I said that's just sophistry, anything can be talked into being really nothing if you just keep at it. Explain it to your in-laws maybe, how Al Quaeda just has different values and priorities than them.