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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I understand the is/ought distinction, thank you.

Then why do you keep saying things that prove otherwise?

I am pointing out that the morality you describe is so foreign to most humans that calling it “obvious” is presumptuous at best.

It's obvious in the way I said it was:

Me: It's only because conscious experience exists that morality exists; it's only by rationally thinking through the implication of this that you can participate in morality. The moral way of assessing value is by measuring the capacity to suffer, or the other end, experience happiness/flourishing. And it's when you do that you realize there is no (unselfish) basis to place a higher value on anyone. You'll see that it's only your selfishness that blinds you to this simple truth.

If you can't see it's obvious that all people are of the same value, it's just selfishness. Like, you've been deluded into thinking your Self is privileged, and other people are privileged because of their proximity to your Self. This is obviously immoral, enforced by evolution & culture.

Again, if you had to choose to either save a starving child's life, or have a high thread count duvet cover and heated seats, and you choose the luxuries instead of the child's life and welfare, then you are a selfish coward. And that is what you (and I) are doing. Not theoretically. We're actually choosing to do it in the real, concrete world.

I’m sure you can find examples of principled equal-opportunity altruists, though I suspect many historical examples were motivated by religious and ascetic principles somewhat misaligned with yours. I said statistically zero.

I won't quibble about numbers here. My point was only that it's not at all impossible. But it's certainly not popular.