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What's the right amount of moral outrage? Gedankenexperiment. Install a moral outrage volume meter on our species, dial the the calendar back ten million years,
by hirundo 8y ago
What's the right amount of moral outrage? Gedankenexperiment. Install a moral outrage volume meter on our species, dial the the calendar back ten million years, and play it forward with various outrage volumes. Plot moral outrage volume against H. sapiens biomass in the present day. I'd expect a mass of zero grams at volume zero and zero grams at volume eleven (say, by definition), and an inverted U curve in between.
So lacking the time machine and the outrage rheostat, how do we discover the correct amount of outrage? Do we have too much or too little now, and how can we tell? I can't even guess.
- DiseasedBadger 8y agoYour assumptions seem unlikely. There is no proof moral outrage is on the whole a good thing. No other species requires it. The proper null hypothesis is that it does nothing.
- aaron695 8y agoWe know it hurts people on the end of the moral outrage so the default would be negative. We also know state actors are trying to use it to destabilize countries.
- saghm 8y ago> Your assumptions seem unlikely. There is no proof moral outrage is on the whole a good thing. No other species requires it. I don't see why that's a compelling argument; no other species requires written languages either, but I think on the whole it's been a pretty good investment for ours.
- jdsully 8y agoI see my dogs punish each other for benign behavior - just things they disagree with. It certainly appears to be a form of moral policing within the pack.