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"There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals" is a contradiction; if there were something higher, it'd become your ideal or goal. It's o

by panic 11y ago

"There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals" is a contradiction; if there were something higher, it'd become your ideal or goal. It's only a contradiction if you're aware of what that higher something is. Part of humility is realizing there are things you don't know. Your ideals and goals are imperfect, and will change over your lifetime. Why didn't you choose the "highest" ideals to begin with?

Retra 11y ago
You can't make decisions based on information you don't have. An unknown ideal is not "higher" -- it's unknown -- as in, you don't actually know that it's "higher," and you couldn't do anything about it even if it were. You certainly can't believe in the unknown. "Pursuit of the unknown" is not itself an unknown ideal. You should look for new information. That's not a mystery, that's an ideal you can have right now. If you think there's a better ideal than that, then I don't know what to tell you.
- deleted 11y ago
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- lazaroclapp 11y ago
  > You can't make decisions based on information you don't have. You can't. But you can make decisions based on the information that your information is incomplete. A sort of 'bias towards inaction' in those cases in which the action would be irreversible. Consider the death penalty. You may think that's morally right to apply the death penalty to, say, mass murderers. You may also, without contradiction, decide that this should never be done in practice. The reasoning being that it would require infallibility on the part of the persons deciding to apply such punishment. So you don't even say "the highest moral imperative is that thou shall not kill". There might very well be cases where the best moral decision would be to kill someone under some 'higher' ideal you know nothing of. But you can still simply say "I do not trust my moral judgement to the point were I'd take another's life because of such judgement, no matter how righteous my judgement feels to me". Of course, you are also unlike to trust any other person to make such determinations, either. How to try and dissuade others from taking actions that you don't consider acceptable, without resorting to actions for which you know you are not qualified to make the moral call, is a whole other matter.
  - Retra 11y ago
    Inaction is just another kind of action, and an ideal that demands it it just as much an ideal as any other. You can't say "the best moral decision is to wait for more information" and "there is no best moral decision" at the same time. That's nonsense. You can be aware that you don't know the best course of action, but if you can't take the best course of action, that matters very little. I get what you're trying to say, but I don't approve of the mechanism you are using to say it. You are essentially asking me to agree with you as a matter of social ritual; we should all go bow our heads and whip ourselves every time we think we know something! Here's the thing, though: you can't preach humility without being a hypocrite. You've taken "don't stick to a moral stance!" as a moral stance and you're sticking right to it. I get that there is no roadmap to perfection. You can't sort the points on a plane. But we live our lives sequentially, and you will order those points, because you cannot do anything unless you do. So you get busy trying to find an order that will maximize your goals, and you make sure that "you" is broad enough to include everybody else as well. You don't sit around beating on yourself because you can't handle the fact that the plane has no intrinsic total order.

by panic 11y ago

Retra 11y ago

You can't make decisions based on information you don't have. An unknown ideal is not "higher" -- it's unknown -- as in, you don't actually know that it's "higher," and you couldn't do anything about it even if it were. You certainly can't believe in the unknown. "Pursuit of the unknown" is not itself an unknown ideal. You should look for new information. That's not a mystery, that's an ideal you can have right now. If you think there's a better ideal than that, then I don't know what to tell you.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
lazaroclapp 11y ago
> You can't make decisions based on information you don't have. You can't. But you can make decisions based on the information that your information is incomplete. A sort of 'bias towards inaction' in those cases in which the action would be irreversible. Consider the death penalty. You may think that's morally right to apply the death penalty to, say, mass murderers. You may also, without contradiction, decide that this should never be done in practice. The reasoning being that it would require infallibility on the part of the persons deciding to apply such punishment. So you don't even say "the highest moral imperative is that thou shall not kill". There might very well be cases where the best moral decision would be to kill someone under some 'higher' ideal you know nothing of. But you can still simply say "I do not trust my moral judgement to the point were I'd take another's life because of such judgement, no matter how righteous my judgement feels to me". Of course, you are also unlike to trust any other person to make such determinations, either. How to try and dissuade others from taking actions that you don't consider acceptable, without resorting to actions for which you know you are not qualified to make the moral call, is a whole other matter.
- Retra 11y ago
  Inaction is just another kind of action, and an ideal that demands it it just as much an ideal as any other. You can't say "the best moral decision is to wait for more information" and "there is no best moral decision" at the same time. That's nonsense. You can be aware that you don't know the best course of action, but if you can't take the best course of action, that matters very little. I get what you're trying to say, but I don't approve of the mechanism you are using to say it. You are essentially asking me to agree with you as a matter of social ritual; we should all go bow our heads and whip ourselves every time we think we know something! Here's the thing, though: you can't preach humility without being a hypocrite. You've taken "don't stick to a moral stance!" as a moral stance and you're sticking right to it. I get that there is no roadmap to perfection. You can't sort the points on a plane. But we live our lives sequentially, and you will order those points, because you cannot do anything unless you do. So you get busy trying to find an order that will maximize your goals, and you make sure that "you" is broad enough to include everybody else as well. You don't sit around beating on yourself because you can't handle the fact that the plane has no intrinsic total order.