5 ms·

Ok, here you go: 1. That which is hateful to you, do not do to another. 2. Do unto others what you would have them do to you. 3. Never levy a punishment

Ok, here you go: 1. That which is hateful to you, do not do to another. 2. Do unto others what you would have them do to you. 3. Never levy a punishment greater than the harm of the offense. 4. Avoid direct conflict with anyone who will kick your ass.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> Do unto others what you would have them do to you. What if you're suicidal? Wouldn't that make murder cool under this set of ethics?
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  Murdering someone would prevent them from committing suicide. Being suicidal is not quite the same as wishing to be murdered. As far as I know, suicide (or self-euthanasia) does not have a settled, common ethical ground. Some cultures abhor it, and some expect it. A few have some problems with the occasional suicide-by-murderous-rampage. Thus, any "universal" ethics would not be able to answer any questions about it in a consistent way. Suicide is a corner case, anyway. The above 4 rules can probably handle at least 80% of ethical dilemmas without much additional thought. Certainly, if you think you would like to know whether a government or multinational is acting against your interests, and you discover evidence of it in your employer, you should sever your relationship by rule #1, blow the whistle by rule #2, and try to remain anonymous by rule #4. Additionally, the worst retaliation you should fear is to have your own bad behavior outed to the public, by rule #3. But you already know your employer is unethical, so who knows what they might do to you? The world would probably be a better place without rule #4, but that's describing what we are, not what we wish to be.
JoshuaDavid 10y ago
3. Never levy a punishment greater than the harm of the offense. Incentivise hard-to-prove offenses that benefit the offender as much as they harm the victim (e.g. theft), because at worst they'll be back where they started...
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  Punishment is distinct from restitution. If a thief takes your MacGuffin, and gets caught, he must return it to you to make you whole, and then might also be required to forfeit an amount up to its value as punishment for thievery. At the point when the cops nab him, it may appear that he stands to lose double what he stole, but that's only because what he stole never belonged to him in the first place. This is why "treble damages" are a big deal, as 3 times the provable harm goes beyond what Lex Talionis normally allows. If you steal a loaf of bread and get sentenced to 20 years in the galleys (like Jean Valjean in Les Miserables), that is quite clearly an unethical punishment. Simple restitution would mandate that the thief produce no more than one loaf to make the baker whole, and Lex Talionis would mandate that if the punishment were not to produce another loaf of bread, it should still need to be a tenth the magnitude of the punishment for someone caught stealing ten loaves of bread, and that in turn would be a thousandth the magnitude of the punishment for someone caught stealing a car.
_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
Sounds more like your ethics than "universal" ethics to me.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  Those rules are more commonly known as the silver rule (rabbi Hillel Sr.), the golden rule (Jesus), Lex Talionis (Hammurabi), and an amalgamation of appeasement, deterrence, and mutually assured destruction. That one hasn't been around quite as long, and isn't quite as glamorous, as it covers the value of bullying and cowardice, so might be debatable as to how pervasive it is. But it is the ethical basis for both the weaker-side tactics in asymmetric warfare and nuclear deterrence, so is followed more by national military policy than by religions. It might have been first put into print by Sun Tzu, maybe? My personal ethics are far further from universal than the list I proposed.
  - _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
    Rabbi, Jesus, Hammurabi doesn't look very universal to me. All three are based on the same tradition of Abrahamic religions and looks mediterianian centric to me. Universal for me would include people in Asia, Australian Aborigines, South America, Inuit etc.
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      Those are just the references I am most familiar with. The Wikipedia page [0] shows many other references, but unfortunately does not currently distinguish between silver rule (don't be a hypocrite) and golden rule (be an exemplar of your own virtues). The limited, proportional punishment maxim also has a page [1]. The origin is undoubtedly Middle Eastern, but migration, empire-building, and colonialism has spread it around the globe. It is not quite universal, but it may have more adherents than any other incompatible principles regarding punishment and revenge. It is not surprising that concepts originating in the Middle East have spread far and wide. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are the #1, #2, and #6 religions. Religions from India are #3, #4, #5, #7, and #9. Confucianism is #8, and Shinto #10. In addition to the religions, there have been at least a dozen empires that spread from or through that region. Universal, for me, is a supermajority (>= 80%) of the economic power on the planet, which also makes a supermajority of the military influence. It's nice to throw non-influential cultures a bone every now and then, out of charity, but their children will be influenced by the cosmopolitan, global-market culture to a far greater extent than they will influence it in return. The cosmopolitan culture pushes itself into every corner of the globe with its mass-market broadcast media, and only pulls out the stuff that can be sold. It's like a "greatest hits" compilation album of every culture, heavily weighted by the history of world conquests. The Australian Aborigines, for example, got to export the boomerang and the didgeridoo. South America gave everyone chocolate, cocaine, and samba. Jamaica gave everyone ska, reggae, and jerk chicken. If you wanted to get your core ethics in there, you should have built your empire sooner, or maybe invented the printing press or radio first. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_eye

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

> Do unto others what you would have them do to you. What if you're suicidal? Wouldn't that make murder cool under this set of ethics?

logfromblammo 10y ago
Murdering someone would prevent them from committing suicide. Being suicidal is not quite the same as wishing to be murdered. As far as I know, suicide (or self-euthanasia) does not have a settled, common ethical ground. Some cultures abhor it, and some expect it. A few have some problems with the occasional suicide-by-murderous-rampage. Thus, any "universal" ethics would not be able to answer any questions about it in a consistent way. Suicide is a corner case, anyway. The above 4 rules can probably handle at least 80% of ethical dilemmas without much additional thought. Certainly, if you think you would like to know whether a government or multinational is acting against your interests, and you discover evidence of it in your employer, you should sever your relationship by rule #1, blow the whistle by rule #2, and try to remain anonymous by rule #4. Additionally, the worst retaliation you should fear is to have your own bad behavior outed to the public, by rule #3. But you already know your employer is unethical, so who knows what they might do to you? The world would probably be a better place without rule #4, but that's describing what we are, not what we wish to be.

JoshuaDavid 10y ago

3. Never levy a punishment greater than the harm of the offense. Incentivise hard-to-prove offenses that benefit the offender as much as they harm the victim (e.g. theft), because at worst they'll be back where they started...

logfromblammo 10y ago
Punishment is distinct from restitution. If a thief takes your MacGuffin, and gets caught, he must return it to you to make you whole, and then might also be required to forfeit an amount up to its value as punishment for thievery. At the point when the cops nab him, it may appear that he stands to lose double what he stole, but that's only because what he stole never belonged to him in the first place. This is why "treble damages" are a big deal, as 3 times the provable harm goes beyond what Lex Talionis normally allows. If you steal a loaf of bread and get sentenced to 20 years in the galleys (like Jean Valjean in Les Miserables), that is quite clearly an unethical punishment. Simple restitution would mandate that the thief produce no more than one loaf to make the baker whole, and Lex Talionis would mandate that if the punishment were not to produce another loaf of bread, it should still need to be a tenth the magnitude of the punishment for someone caught stealing ten loaves of bread, and that in turn would be a thousandth the magnitude of the punishment for someone caught stealing a car.

_Codemonkeyism 10y ago

Sounds more like your ethics than "universal" ethics to me.

logfromblammo 10y ago
Those rules are more commonly known as the silver rule (rabbi Hillel Sr.), the golden rule (Jesus), Lex Talionis (Hammurabi), and an amalgamation of appeasement, deterrence, and mutually assured destruction. That one hasn't been around quite as long, and isn't quite as glamorous, as it covers the value of bullying and cowardice, so might be debatable as to how pervasive it is. But it is the ethical basis for both the weaker-side tactics in asymmetric warfare and nuclear deterrence, so is followed more by national military policy than by religions. It might have been first put into print by Sun Tzu, maybe? My personal ethics are far further from universal than the list I proposed.
- _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
  Rabbi, Jesus, Hammurabi doesn't look very universal to me. All three are based on the same tradition of Abrahamic religions and looks mediterianian centric to me. Universal for me would include people in Asia, Australian Aborigines, South America, Inuit etc.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    Those are just the references I am most familiar with. The Wikipedia page [0] shows many other references, but unfortunately does not currently distinguish between silver rule (don't be a hypocrite) and golden rule (be an exemplar of your own virtues). The limited, proportional punishment maxim also has a page [1]. The origin is undoubtedly Middle Eastern, but migration, empire-building, and colonialism has spread it around the globe. It is not quite universal, but it may have more adherents than any other incompatible principles regarding punishment and revenge. It is not surprising that concepts originating in the Middle East have spread far and wide. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are the #1, #2, and #6 religions. Religions from India are #3, #4, #5, #7, and #9. Confucianism is #8, and Shinto #10. In addition to the religions, there have been at least a dozen empires that spread from or through that region. Universal, for me, is a supermajority (>= 80%) of the economic power on the planet, which also makes a supermajority of the military influence. It's nice to throw non-influential cultures a bone every now and then, out of charity, but their children will be influenced by the cosmopolitan, global-market culture to a far greater extent than they will influence it in return. The cosmopolitan culture pushes itself into every corner of the globe with its mass-market broadcast media, and only pulls out the stuff that can be sold. It's like a "greatest hits" compilation album of every culture, heavily weighted by the history of world conquests. The Australian Aborigines, for example, got to export the boomerang and the didgeridoo. South America gave everyone chocolate, cocaine, and samba. Jamaica gave everyone ska, reggae, and jerk chicken. If you wanted to get your core ethics in there, you should have built your empire sooner, or maybe invented the printing press or radio first. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_eye