8 ms·

Makes one reflect on how much do we take for granted when it comes to ethics. I remember a (googleable) exchange of letters between the former owner and an ex-

Makes one reflect on how much do we take for granted when it comes to ethics. I remember a (googleable) exchange of letters between the former owner and an ex-slave. The former was genuinely hurt by slave's betrayal and urged them to go back. There were people for whom owning other people was so normalized that they were actually angry at their former slaves. I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Or maybe we'll go back and the future generations will laugh at our idealistic concept of "human rights", while sipping drinks served by their slaves.

rolltiide 7y ago
> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Of course, but if you say which ones they are they'll be censored on all the consensus based websites like this one, since people won't agree.
- lopmotr 7y ago
  I wouldn't say censorship, but yes, the Overton window is powerful. Currently, it heavily favors individual liberty at the expense of survival of the society or quality of life for future people.
Ma8ee 7y ago
I think the way we treat animals today will be viewed as very barbaric within a generation or two. We are everyday learning more about how much intelligence and consciousness something like cows posses.
- markdown 7y ago
  Have you lived on a farm? Cows are the dumbest creatures, and they taste wonderful.
  - keyP 7y ago
    According to the paper cited in this article, they may not be as dumb as you think https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/animal-emotions/201711/cows-science-shows-theyre-bright-and-emotional-individuals https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/animal-emotions/2017...
  - kingkawn 7y ago
    We see what we are in the world around us
- reportgunner 7y ago
  > We are everyday learning more about how much intelligence and consciousness something like cows posses How can I join this learning ?
  - moccachino 7y ago
    Regarding crows, here is a start: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769575
    - Guillaume86 7y ago
      Cows <> Crows
  - MrGLaDOS 7y ago
    Try this (and other) book(s) by primatologist Frans de Waal: https://books.google.it/books?id=vhmZCgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y https://books.google.it/books?id=vhmZCgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic
- potench 7y ago
  Agreed; mass production and slaughter of animals at the expense of the environment and generally our health will become frowned upon as alternatives become more available.
lopmotr 7y ago
We treat children like that. Largely for the economic value they can provide by making them spend most of their awake life at school. If school wasn't needed, it would look barbaric.
- HSO 7y ago
  One of the biggest lies I never believed is that school is for education. It is for many things but education (not indoctrination or brainwashing) is not one if them. Thankfully I realized this very early.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    Is there a conspiracy of the local school board?
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      Yes, of course. It's visible in many subtle ways. One example is uniforms. Another is how "social studies" now stands where "history" once stood. Nearly 20% of high school graduates are illiterate. A highs school diploma signals something, but it's not being educated. Some amount of education does occur, but it's incidental to social indoctrination, keeping parents' wages high by forcing kids out of the job market, etc.
      - pjc50 7y ago
        > Nearly 20% of high school graduates are illiterate That's America's choice to have a failing system, not a universal property of schooling.
        Consultant32452 7y ago
        A universal property of state run schooling is that schools are literal prisons for children and for many people is the only place they'll experience violence first hand. The finer details will vary by location.
HSO 7y ago
„Wage slavery“ and „factory farming“ (aka as concentration camps for other sentient beings) will be viewed unkindly by future generations. Actually, some if us already view it as barbaric but it will need more of us to finally do away with them.
- larnmar 7y ago
  If your conclusion is “well obviously, the people of the future will share my ethics” then you’re missing the point of the exercise. The point of the exercise is humility — to think about how people in the future might think your ethics are wrong and evil — not arrogance.
  - kmm 7y ago
    The acceptance of slavery was not universal. Back then there were already people, abolitionists, striving to end slavery. So looking at what small but vocal groups protest now can give a hint at what future people could find wrong or evil. It's not at all arrogant to think future people will share my ethics, just like abolitionists were not arrogant to hope for a world without slavery. Arrogance would be believing they'd share all of your ethics, and just as well I'm sure most abolitionists were still very racist, sexist, homophobic, ...
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Ethic shifts don't come out of the blue; they start as a growing sentiment within a population, which at some point (whether through growth or things being shaken up by e.g. war) reaches critical mass.
    - FeepingCreature 7y ago
      Sure but that's no reason to expect yourself in specific to be on the right side of the shift.
      - Xelbair 7y ago
        Nor the opposite is true. Both, or i should say all options, are probable, but not sure.
netcan 7y ago
Well... The more radical political philosophies (at any given time) make lots of equivalences (ethical and others) between slavery & other stuff. Wage labour today, and obviously older institutions like tenancy, serfdom, indentured labour, etc. Even many free thinking, but politically mainstream people (eg t cowen) make non-ethical comparisons between slavery and employment. It's easier to agree with if you widen your concept of slavery, beyond the specific institution of African slavery in the US... during the later years. That system was so brutal and unethical by slavery standards. So, it's hard to compare to. Before, during & after chattel slavery, the Americas had other systems of "slavery." Most were not that* brutal, but still slavery. Indentured service was huge, at a certain point. Share croppers. These people probably outnumbered free employees in many times and places. Serfs were not free to go. Monks were arguably enslaved by abbots. Artisans sometimes bought apprentices as children. In western Europe, the "tenant" concept that replaced serfdom was often similar to sharecropping.. arguably also a system of slavery. We know of ancient examples: Greek, Roman, Jewish, Persian, Babylonian... Ancient law codes (including the bible) dedicated a lot of ink to slavery laws. Slaver rights, slave rights, manumission, and such. A Greek slave could be wealthy, and that should help broaden the concept. Marxism sees slavery in class terms. Ie it's just a name to describe the lowest class, and wage labour is a descendant of slavery. There are even many modern-economy examples where employers have a say in an employee's marriage or reproductive choices. That arguably is slavery-like. Anyway... once you widen the concept of slavery with multiple examples that you easily accept as "obviously slavery*, drawing analogies to other institutions is easy. Indenture, for example, exists, today, in practice, widely... in many forms. Invariably, the "slavers" think it's ethically sound.
humanrebar 7y ago
> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Contraceptive abortion, especially late term ones. Consider how unusual and horrifying the villain in Cell Block 99 is. Also consider the consider the cognitive dissonance between current abortion laws and the legal consequences for assault resulting in a failed pregnancy. EDIT: "Contraceptive" is probably more precise than "prophylactic"
- pjc50 7y ago
  There is almost no "late term" "prophylactic" abortion anywhere. Late term abortion is usually driven by medical necessity. Denying this reality gets women killed by withholding medical treatment from them. It was the death of Savita Halappanavar as a result of this policy that ultimately triggered the liberalisation of abortion in Ireland.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    Let's not attack straw men. It's also barbaric to ban medically necessary procedures. Besides, frequency of an event isn't a defense against charges of barbarism. Lobotomies, the Tuskegee Experiment, and eugenic sterilization weren't all that common, but they were barbaric.
    - youdontknowtho 7y ago
      It's easy to make abortion seem barbaric in a HN comment thread. The lives of people are complicated and messy. Your opinion about how other people should conduct their personal lives shouldn't extend to family planning. Period. If we are being honest, open heart surgery is barbaric. They cut people open and then break all their ribs. It's not assault or murder, for a variety of reasons that I'm not going to go into. Further, experience tells me that granting good faith in these arguments is usually a bad idea. I oppose the right-wing on every issue. Abortion is particularly important in this context because it normalizes state based oppression against women.
      - 7y ago
thih9 7y ago
> I remember a (googleable) exchange of letters between the former owner and an ex-slave. The former was genuinely hurt by slave's betrayal and urged them to go back. Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Anderson#Letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Anderson#Letter
kaffeemitsahne 7y ago
> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Here we go again, everyone posts their pet not-actually-barbaric thing under the moral authority of people from the future.
- Pigo 7y ago
  By so many metrics our lives are incredible compared to every other period of human history. Of course it's not perfect, there's always room to improve, but there's a stark contrast between how things actually are and how many perceive it to be. Very few problems are as unambiguous as slavery. A lot of our problems are much more nuanced.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    Slavery is unambiguous in retrospect. I find the mental gymnastics of the slaveholders to be fascinating and disturbing. The most barbaric things we do now are probably closely guarded by people as legitimate traditions or rights.
workthrowaway 7y ago
wow, you've just opened a pandora box :) from the school system, to vegan diet, to parenting, to immigration...
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/letter-jourdon-anderson-freedman-writes-former-master https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/letter-jour... I don't know that the former master was genuinely hurt as much as he was trying to get some more free labor.
MrGLaDOS 7y ago
Ethical philosopher Peter Singer presents and expands on the following argument in his book:[1] "First Premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad. Second Premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so. Third Premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong." [1] https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/the-book/ https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/the-book/ They bought back the publishing rights, so it is freely downloadable.
aphextim 7y ago
>I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Circumcision aka male genital mutilation is the first thing that comes to mind.
- aphextim 7y ago
  My reasoning stems from this person's presentation, which after he gave was let go from Harvard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuy163srRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuy163srRc
roberto 7y ago
> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. I became vegan after asking myself that same question.

rolltiide 7y ago

> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Of course, but if you say which ones they are they'll be censored on all the consensus based websites like this one, since people won't agree.

lopmotr 7y ago
I wouldn't say censorship, but yes, the Overton window is powerful. Currently, it heavily favors individual liberty at the expense of survival of the society or quality of life for future people.

Ma8ee 7y ago

I think the way we treat animals today will be viewed as very barbaric within a generation or two. We are everyday learning more about how much intelligence and consciousness something like cows posses.

markdown 7y ago
Have you lived on a farm? Cows are the dumbest creatures, and they taste wonderful.
- keyP 7y ago
  According to the paper cited in this article, they may not be as dumb as you think https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/animal-emotions/201711/cows-science-shows-theyre-bright-and-emotional-individuals https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/animal-emotions/2017...
- kingkawn 7y ago
  We see what we are in the world around us
reportgunner 7y ago
> We are everyday learning more about how much intelligence and consciousness something like cows posses How can I join this learning ?
- moccachino 7y ago
  Regarding crows, here is a start: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769575
  - Guillaume86 7y ago
    Cows <> Crows
- MrGLaDOS 7y ago
  Try this (and other) book(s) by primatologist Frans de Waal: https://books.google.it/books?id=vhmZCgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y https://books.google.it/books?id=vhmZCgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic
potench 7y ago
Agreed; mass production and slaughter of animals at the expense of the environment and generally our health will become frowned upon as alternatives become more available.

lopmotr 7y ago

We treat children like that. Largely for the economic value they can provide by making them spend most of their awake life at school. If school wasn't needed, it would look barbaric.

HSO 7y ago
One of the biggest lies I never believed is that school is for education. It is for many things but education (not indoctrination or brainwashing) is not one if them. Thankfully I realized this very early.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  Is there a conspiracy of the local school board?
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    Yes, of course. It's visible in many subtle ways. One example is uniforms. Another is how "social studies" now stands where "history" once stood. Nearly 20% of high school graduates are illiterate. A highs school diploma signals something, but it's not being educated. Some amount of education does occur, but it's incidental to social indoctrination, keeping parents' wages high by forcing kids out of the job market, etc.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      > Nearly 20% of high school graduates are illiterate That's America's choice to have a failing system, not a universal property of schooling.
      - Consultant32452 7y ago
        A universal property of state run schooling is that schools are literal prisons for children and for many people is the only place they'll experience violence first hand. The finer details will vary by location.

HSO 7y ago

„Wage slavery“ and „factory farming“ (aka as concentration camps for other sentient beings) will be viewed unkindly by future generations. Actually, some if us already view it as barbaric but it will need more of us to finally do away with them.

larnmar 7y ago
If your conclusion is “well obviously, the people of the future will share my ethics” then you’re missing the point of the exercise. The point of the exercise is humility — to think about how people in the future might think your ethics are wrong and evil — not arrogance.
- kmm 7y ago
  The acceptance of slavery was not universal. Back then there were already people, abolitionists, striving to end slavery. So looking at what small but vocal groups protest now can give a hint at what future people could find wrong or evil. It's not at all arrogant to think future people will share my ethics, just like abolitionists were not arrogant to hope for a world without slavery. Arrogance would be believing they'd share all of your ethics, and just as well I'm sure most abolitionists were still very racist, sexist, homophobic, ...
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Ethic shifts don't come out of the blue; they start as a growing sentiment within a population, which at some point (whether through growth or things being shaken up by e.g. war) reaches critical mass.
  - FeepingCreature 7y ago
    Sure but that's no reason to expect yourself in specific to be on the right side of the shift.
    - Xelbair 7y ago
      Nor the opposite is true. Both, or i should say all options, are probable, but not sure.

netcan 7y ago

Well... The more radical political philosophies (at any given time) make lots of equivalences (ethical and others) between slavery & other stuff. Wage labour today, and obviously older institutions like tenancy, serfdom, indentured labour, etc. Even many free thinking, but politically mainstream people (eg t cowen) make non-ethical comparisons between slavery and employment. It's easier to agree with if you widen your concept of slavery, beyond the specific institution of African slavery in the US... during the later years. That system was so brutal and unethical by slavery standards. So, it's hard to compare to. Before, during & after chattel slavery, the Americas had other systems of "slavery." Most were not that* brutal, but still slavery. Indentured service was huge, at a certain point. Share croppers. These people probably outnumbered free employees in many times and places. Serfs were not free to go. Monks were arguably enslaved by abbots. Artisans sometimes bought apprentices as children. In western Europe, the "tenant" concept that replaced serfdom was often similar to sharecropping.. arguably also a system of slavery. We know of ancient examples: Greek, Roman, Jewish, Persian, Babylonian... Ancient law codes (including the bible) dedicated a lot of ink to slavery laws. Slaver rights, slave rights, manumission, and such. A Greek slave could be wealthy, and that should help broaden the concept. Marxism sees slavery in class terms. Ie it's just a name to describe the lowest class, and wage labour is a descendant of slavery. There are even many modern-economy examples where employers have a say in an employee's marriage or reproductive choices. That arguably is slavery-like. Anyway... once you widen the concept of slavery with multiple examples that you easily accept as "obviously slavery*, drawing analogies to other institutions is easy. Indenture, for example, exists, today, in practice, widely... in many forms. Invariably, the "slavers" think it's ethically sound.

humanrebar 7y ago

> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Contraceptive abortion, especially late term ones. Consider how unusual and horrifying the villain in Cell Block 99 is. Also consider the consider the cognitive dissonance between current abortion laws and the legal consequences for assault resulting in a failed pregnancy. EDIT: "Contraceptive" is probably more precise than "prophylactic"

pjc50 7y ago
There is almost no "late term" "prophylactic" abortion anywhere. Late term abortion is usually driven by medical necessity. Denying this reality gets women killed by withholding medical treatment from them. It was the death of Savita Halappanavar as a result of this policy that ultimately triggered the liberalisation of abortion in Ireland.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  Let's not attack straw men. It's also barbaric to ban medically necessary procedures. Besides, frequency of an event isn't a defense against charges of barbarism. Lobotomies, the Tuskegee Experiment, and eugenic sterilization weren't all that common, but they were barbaric.
  - youdontknowtho 7y ago
    It's easy to make abortion seem barbaric in a HN comment thread. The lives of people are complicated and messy. Your opinion about how other people should conduct their personal lives shouldn't extend to family planning. Period. If we are being honest, open heart surgery is barbaric. They cut people open and then break all their ribs. It's not assault or murder, for a variety of reasons that I'm not going to go into. Further, experience tells me that granting good faith in these arguments is usually a bad idea. I oppose the right-wing on every issue. Abortion is particularly important in this context because it normalizes state based oppression against women.
    - 7y ago

thih9 7y ago

> I remember a (googleable) exchange of letters between the former owner and an ex-slave. The former was genuinely hurt by slave's betrayal and urged them to go back. Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Anderson#Letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Anderson#Letter

kaffeemitsahne 7y ago

> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Here we go again, everyone posts their pet not-actually-barbaric thing under the moral authority of people from the future.

Pigo 7y ago
By so many metrics our lives are incredible compared to every other period of human history. Of course it's not perfect, there's always room to improve, but there's a stark contrast between how things actually are and how many perceive it to be. Very few problems are as unambiguous as slavery. A lot of our problems are much more nuanced.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  Slavery is unambiguous in retrospect. I find the mental gymnastics of the slaveholders to be fascinating and disturbing. The most barbaric things we do now are probably closely guarded by people as legitimate traditions or rights.

workthrowaway 7y ago

wow, you've just opened a pandora box :) from the school system, to vegan diet, to parenting, to immigration...

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/letter-jourdon-anderson-freedman-writes-former-master https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/letter-jour... I don't know that the former master was genuinely hurt as much as he was trying to get some more free labor.

MrGLaDOS 7y ago

Ethical philosopher Peter Singer presents and expands on the following argument in his book:[1] "First Premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad. Second Premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so. Third Premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong." [1] https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/the-book/ https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/the-book/ They bought back the publishing rights, so it is freely downloadable.

aphextim 7y ago

>I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Circumcision aka male genital mutilation is the first thing that comes to mind.

aphextim 7y ago
My reasoning stems from this person's presentation, which after he gave was let go from Harvard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuy163srRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuy163srRc

roberto 7y ago

> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. I became vegan after asking myself that same question.