Tag Archives: morality

The Economic Perspective On Moral Standards

[Content warning: scrupulosity. Some recent edits, see Mistakes page for details.] I. There are some pretty morally unacceptable things going on in a pretty structural way in society. Sometimes I hear some activists take this to an extreme: no currently … Continue reading

Nominating Oneself For The Short End Of A Tradeoff

I’ve gotten a chance to discuss The Whole City Is Center with a few people now. They remain skeptical of the idea that anyone could “deserve” to have bad things happen to them, based on their personality traits or misdeeds. … Continue reading

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The Whole City Is Center

Related to yesterday’s post on people being too quick to assume value differences: some of the simplest fake value differences are where people make a big deal about routing around a certain word. And some of the most complicated real … Continue reading

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Fundamental Value Differences Are Not That Fundamental

I. Ozy (and others) talk about fundamental value differences as a barrier to cooperation. On their model (as I understand it) there are at least two kinds of disagreement. In the first, people share values but disagree about facts. For … Continue reading

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Axiology, Morality, Law

I. Philosopher Amanda Askell questions the practice of moral offsetting. Offsetting is where you compensate for a bad thing by doing a good thing, then consider yourself even. For example, an environmentalist takes a carbon-belching plane flight, then pays to … Continue reading

The Lizard People Of Alpha Draconis 1 Decided To Build An Ansible

I. The lizard people of Alpha Draconis 1 decided to build an ansible. The transmitter was a colossal tower of silksteel, doorless and windowless. Inside were millions of modular silksteel cubes, each filled with beetles, a different species in every … Continue reading

Determining Consent

A question most people successfully avoid asking: can institutionalized patients ever have sex? The answer is ‘mostly no, unless they are very good at sneaking past nurses’. They also can’t kiss, hold hands, cuddle, or have any other form of … Continue reading

Survey Results: Suffering Vs. Oblivion

[Content warning: suffering, oblivion] Every so often, someone on Reddit realizes that about half of people wipe themselves with toilet paper sitting down, and the other half do it standing up. This discovery is followed by horror on both sides … Continue reading

Contra Huemer On Morals

Michael Huemer thinks there are objective moral truths, because we’ve been moving in toward a particular coherent ethical perspective for the past few centuries, and for all we know this could be because that ethical perspective is Objective Truth. Achitophel: … Continue reading

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Extremism In Thought Experiment Is No Vice

[content warning: description of fictional rape and torture.] Phil Robertson is being criticized for a thought experiment in which an atheist’s family is raped and murdered. On a talk show, he accused atheists of believing that there was no such … Continue reading