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Nemrod67yesterday at 10:20 AM1 replyview on HN

On average people are incapable of holding a moral position through to the end.

- Bad parenting is bad, we should have a permit for it --> are you ready to get denied the right to try having kids?

- Thou shalt not kill --> except those really bad people I don't like!

- Stealing is bad --> except when you're "starving"

Our perception of good and evil are multifaceted, with most of it happening in our background cognition.

There is a strange "mirror" stopping people from exchanging once a rift has opened. Someone else posited that it might be a fight or flight reaction.

I posit that our cognition is based on negation, and thus the shape of our tool impact our results.


Replies

batch12yesterday at 10:29 AM

Maybe. Killing or stealing for a reason doesn't make the action morally good, just less morally bad than the outcome it was intended to prevent. I've never heard the first parenting example.