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The biggest problem from my PoV is that people seem like they are always absolutely sure that the contemporary understanding of morals is actually correct, unli

by jchw 5y ago

The biggest problem from my PoV is that people seem like they are always absolutely sure that the contemporary understanding of morals is actually correct, unlike the primitive beliefs of the past, and that there's nothing left to challenge. Convincing people that this is what people always believe and yet it has never been true seems impossible. It seems difficult for people to imagine that there's more left to discuss. What I'd rather do is try to convince people that it's wrong to apply this kind of ideological control regardless of whether or not you think it's correct. But that's hard, because if it was correct, and people do earnestly believe it is, then what do they have to lose? I also think that dishonest portrayals of even recent history are a huge problem for understanding that a lot of the moral conundrums we have today are not new. It's mostly the sensationalism and moral panics that are always changing.

dmingod666 5y ago
The science and societies of the past were always flawed, and mistaken, they just didn't know better. The science and societies of the present never are wrong or flawed in their thinking. Always was true always will be. I think it's cause: 1. Arrogance 2. Dead people take blame very well, and can't really argue back.
- mancerayder 5y ago
  Yes and 3. There's an element of group belonging in a collective righteousness. And that's definitely not unique to the present.
- TeeMassive 5y ago
  > The science and societies of the past were always flawed, and mistaken, they just didn't know better. The science and societies of the present never are wrong or flawed in their thinking. That's also the reasoning the communists and the National Socialists used in their reasoning; turns out they were faced with the same problems their predecessors had to deal with but they didn't really have better solutions. In the end the people paid because it was more important to save face than to admit being wrong.
- api 5y ago
  Or maybe it’s always true, at least on average over long time spans. I’ve always thought that if your children think they are wiser than you it means you have been an excellent parent. If they look back with awe at your superior wisdom, it means things got worse and you perhaps failed to leave a legacy.
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
> "The biggest problem from my PoV is that people seem like they are always absolutely sure that the contemporary understanding of morals is actually correct, unlike the primitive beliefs of the past, and that there's nothing left to challenge." If they claim to be on the left, point out to them that that type of worldview is actually a form of conservatism. Quoting from Wikipedia, "Traditionalist conservatism places a strong emphasis on the notions of custom, convention, and tradition." and note that "customs [and] convention" is the same as the "social norms" argument trotted out by the modern left to defend their activities.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- burnished 5y ago
  I don't get it, what is that supposed to do?
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    "Owning the libs", in a way that won't actually change their minds, but will make the speaker feel smarter and righter. In other words, nothing useful.
- KittenInABox 5y ago
  What do you do if they claim to be on the right? Or if they claim that they're not political at all, they're just stating facts? (Genuinely asking!)
  - hume_annoyed 5y ago
    Ask them about what they know they don't know and you might get a chance to understand their understanding. Different conclusions should come from differing, random selections of life experiences. Calling a conservative a conservative would not have the same effect as with an avowed liberal, but on that point, if you can find out and point out what more commonly liberal beliefs they hold, you might chide them enough to think outside the (non-)party lines.
watwut 5y ago
Both past societies and current ones contain contradictory points of view. There was always conflict between people of opposing opinions. They were always people who broke contemporary moral codes, either for money, power or profit or idealism. There were always sociopaths or people who were cruel for fun. As in, here you are attacking strawman.
exporectomy 5y ago
I think part of it is that different conditions that different societies exist in affect what's morally right and wrong. For example, in a secure stable country, the need to fight wars may seem unimportant and you might even think war is morally wrong. But in a country that's constantly under threat of being destroyed by enemies, war is essential to survival, and a conscientious objector would reasonably be seen as morally wrong.
- TuringTest 5y ago
  That's an important part, yes. Morals are ideas, and as such evolve in an environment that makes them thrive, with the ones more adapted to the situation gaining more weight. If only because a population led by maladjusted ideas will disappear. Ideally, scientific facts thrive by surviving to experiments that fail to disprove them, but this does not exclude them entirely from that dynamic of social evolution. What experiments are performed is decided on the basis of what is desirable to investigate, according to the beliefs of the type of research that is deemed appropriate.
isitdopamine 5y ago
> and that there's nothing left to challenge. Also, I would add that history is not linear, it’s not the progressive challenging of old prejudices. Sometimes, in our efforts to strive for better morals, we make terrible mistakes. Phrenology come to mind, but there could be many other examples.
roenxi 5y ago
The logical conclusion of this train of thought is ... not to make policy based on science. Just make the science available, and let people do what they like. If the plan is to create policies based on "the science", then people will lie about what the science is in order to get their policies into play. It is hard to convince people with that opener, but the evidence is that it works quite well. One of the interesting tricks about Western democracies is that it channels the fleeting madness of crowds in the most productive direction without trying too hard to suppress it.
- __s 5y ago
  Except what are policies supposed to be based on? Replacing "science" with "data" is effectively the same thing. So policies are supposed to be pushed without evoking evidence of their effectiveness? Referencing where such policies have worked elsewhere is referencing experiments
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    Policies are supposed to be (and inevitably are) designed based on a balance between empirical analysis of their likely effects and a more holistic analysis of what people want. The holistic factors determine what kinds of empirical evidence are relevant and how much of it is required. If someone tells you they've designed a policy based purely on "science" or "data", they've baked in some implicit value judgments, and you've gotta understand what they are to properly evaluate the policy.
- katzgrau 5y ago
  > If the plan is to create policies based on "the science", then people will lie about what the science is in order to get their policies into play. Or, in my opinion, more frequently - sincerely adhere to, but not actually understand the science and still push those policies anyway. I've been more concerned with people who claim that some viewpoint is based on "science" while they actually don't even have a surface level understanding of it and whether it's been twisted to support a particular viewpoint. For the sufficiently hardheaded and ignorant, "science" is another form of religion and one-word conversation stopper. More of a comment, no suggested solution.
makomk 5y ago
The most astounding thing is that the people who are so confident that their current understanding of morals is absolutely correct and there is no possible reason to debate it or challenge it were, not very long ago at all, just as confident and vehement about things that they now consider morally abominable. This is very obvious in rapidly-changing areas like trans rights, where you can see people insist that only evil bigots would be uncomfortable with trans activists beating up elderly lesbians just for holding views that, only a handful of years earlier, the same people insisted it was bigoted to even criticise in any way.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  But are you right or wrong? Any evidence of such a person existing? Groups and political labels change their membership over time so you can't use those as a proxy for people.
rayiner 5y ago
Professionals have long leaned pretty liberal, but they had at least putatively neutral principles and honestly tried to put those ahead of personal politics. That seems to be eroding now as millennials have decided that the professions should be vehicles for social justice, and of course it ends up being their left-leaning vision of how to achieve that. In the process, it’s destroying the credibility of our institutions. The behavior of the medical community during the pandemic has been outrageous. My dad has done public health for 30 years in the developing world. You don’t get vaccine-skeptical people in rural Bangladesh to get vaccinated by telling them they’re idiots and making threats. Yet that’s been the main game plan with less educated rural people here in the US: berate the white ones for not being vaccinated, and then ignore the lack of vaccination among the non-white ones. That’s a profound failure to understand the profession’s role relative to the rest of society.
- Aunche 5y ago
  >Yet that’s been the main game plan with less educated rural people here in the US: berate the white ones for not being vaccinated Do people who do this genuinely believe they are helping to encourage people to vaccinate? My impression is that they just want to feel smug.
  - Benjammer 5y ago
    I think it's sort of a type of double standard where you say that "your side" is only acting out of fear/confusion/emotion/ignorance/etc but the "other side" has a long, complicated game plan that is surely going to fail, and everything they do is committed towards their bad plan, so you feel the need to "call them out" on it. You can't really "call someone out" in the same way if they are just confused or upset, rather than evil.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    I think intersectional thinking clouds their understanding of the power relationship. Ordinarily, a public health person recognize non-college rural people as a disadvantaged group, and understand that these people may have less trust, be working with poor information, etc. Getting those people to use available health services is Public Health 101. But in an intersectional analysis, “non-college rural whites” is near the top of the “oppressor” hierarchy. I think that causes people to perceive their attacks as “punching up” against more powerful people who are being willfully malicious.

by jchw 5y ago

dmingod666 5y ago

The science and societies of the past were always flawed, and mistaken, they just didn't know better. The science and societies of the present never are wrong or flawed in their thinking. Always was true always will be. I think it's cause: 1. Arrogance 2. Dead people take blame very well, and can't really argue back.

mancerayder 5y ago
Yes and 3. There's an element of group belonging in a collective righteousness. And that's definitely not unique to the present.
TeeMassive 5y ago
> The science and societies of the past were always flawed, and mistaken, they just didn't know better. The science and societies of the present never are wrong or flawed in their thinking. That's also the reasoning the communists and the National Socialists used in their reasoning; turns out they were faced with the same problems their predecessors had to deal with but they didn't really have better solutions. In the end the people paid because it was more important to save face than to admit being wrong.
api 5y ago
Or maybe it’s always true, at least on average over long time spans. I’ve always thought that if your children think they are wiser than you it means you have been an excellent parent. If they look back with awe at your superior wisdom, it means things got worse and you perhaps failed to leave a legacy.

ThrowawayR2 5y ago

> "The biggest problem from my PoV is that people seem like they are always absolutely sure that the contemporary understanding of morals is actually correct, unlike the primitive beliefs of the past, and that there's nothing left to challenge." If they claim to be on the left, point out to them that that type of worldview is actually a form of conservatism. Quoting from Wikipedia, "Traditionalist conservatism places a strong emphasis on the notions of custom, convention, and tradition." and note that "customs [and] convention" is the same as the "social norms" argument trotted out by the modern left to defend their activities.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
burnished 5y ago
I don't get it, what is that supposed to do?
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  "Owning the libs", in a way that won't actually change their minds, but will make the speaker feel smarter and righter. In other words, nothing useful.
KittenInABox 5y ago
What do you do if they claim to be on the right? Or if they claim that they're not political at all, they're just stating facts? (Genuinely asking!)
- hume_annoyed 5y ago
  Ask them about what they know they don't know and you might get a chance to understand their understanding. Different conclusions should come from differing, random selections of life experiences. Calling a conservative a conservative would not have the same effect as with an avowed liberal, but on that point, if you can find out and point out what more commonly liberal beliefs they hold, you might chide them enough to think outside the (non-)party lines.

watwut 5y ago

Both past societies and current ones contain contradictory points of view. There was always conflict between people of opposing opinions. They were always people who broke contemporary moral codes, either for money, power or profit or idealism. There were always sociopaths or people who were cruel for fun. As in, here you are attacking strawman.

exporectomy 5y ago

I think part of it is that different conditions that different societies exist in affect what's morally right and wrong. For example, in a secure stable country, the need to fight wars may seem unimportant and you might even think war is morally wrong. But in a country that's constantly under threat of being destroyed by enemies, war is essential to survival, and a conscientious objector would reasonably be seen as morally wrong.

TuringTest 5y ago
That's an important part, yes. Morals are ideas, and as such evolve in an environment that makes them thrive, with the ones more adapted to the situation gaining more weight. If only because a population led by maladjusted ideas will disappear. Ideally, scientific facts thrive by surviving to experiments that fail to disprove them, but this does not exclude them entirely from that dynamic of social evolution. What experiments are performed is decided on the basis of what is desirable to investigate, according to the beliefs of the type of research that is deemed appropriate.

isitdopamine 5y ago

> and that there's nothing left to challenge. Also, I would add that history is not linear, it’s not the progressive challenging of old prejudices. Sometimes, in our efforts to strive for better morals, we make terrible mistakes. Phrenology come to mind, but there could be many other examples.

roenxi 5y ago

The logical conclusion of this train of thought is ... not to make policy based on science. Just make the science available, and let people do what they like. If the plan is to create policies based on "the science", then people will lie about what the science is in order to get their policies into play. It is hard to convince people with that opener, but the evidence is that it works quite well. One of the interesting tricks about Western democracies is that it channels the fleeting madness of crowds in the most productive direction without trying too hard to suppress it.

__s 5y ago
Except what are policies supposed to be based on? Replacing "science" with "data" is effectively the same thing. So policies are supposed to be pushed without evoking evidence of their effectiveness? Referencing where such policies have worked elsewhere is referencing experiments
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  Policies are supposed to be (and inevitably are) designed based on a balance between empirical analysis of their likely effects and a more holistic analysis of what people want. The holistic factors determine what kinds of empirical evidence are relevant and how much of it is required. If someone tells you they've designed a policy based purely on "science" or "data", they've baked in some implicit value judgments, and you've gotta understand what they are to properly evaluate the policy.
katzgrau 5y ago
> If the plan is to create policies based on "the science", then people will lie about what the science is in order to get their policies into play. Or, in my opinion, more frequently - sincerely adhere to, but not actually understand the science and still push those policies anyway. I've been more concerned with people who claim that some viewpoint is based on "science" while they actually don't even have a surface level understanding of it and whether it's been twisted to support a particular viewpoint. For the sufficiently hardheaded and ignorant, "science" is another form of religion and one-word conversation stopper. More of a comment, no suggested solution.

makomk 5y ago

The most astounding thing is that the people who are so confident that their current understanding of morals is absolutely correct and there is no possible reason to debate it or challenge it were, not very long ago at all, just as confident and vehement about things that they now consider morally abominable. This is very obvious in rapidly-changing areas like trans rights, where you can see people insist that only evil bigots would be uncomfortable with trans activists beating up elderly lesbians just for holding views that, only a handful of years earlier, the same people insisted it was bigoted to even criticise in any way.

exporectomy 5y ago
But are you right or wrong? Any evidence of such a person existing? Groups and political labels change their membership over time so you can't use those as a proxy for people.

rayiner 5y ago

Professionals have long leaned pretty liberal, but they had at least putatively neutral principles and honestly tried to put those ahead of personal politics. That seems to be eroding now as millennials have decided that the professions should be vehicles for social justice, and of course it ends up being their left-leaning vision of how to achieve that. In the process, it’s destroying the credibility of our institutions. The behavior of the medical community during the pandemic has been outrageous. My dad has done public health for 30 years in the developing world. You don’t get vaccine-skeptical people in rural Bangladesh to get vaccinated by telling them they’re idiots and making threats. Yet that’s been the main game plan with less educated rural people here in the US: berate the white ones for not being vaccinated, and then ignore the lack of vaccination among the non-white ones. That’s a profound failure to understand the profession’s role relative to the rest of society.

Aunche 5y ago
>Yet that’s been the main game plan with less educated rural people here in the US: berate the white ones for not being vaccinated Do people who do this genuinely believe they are helping to encourage people to vaccinate? My impression is that they just want to feel smug.
- Benjammer 5y ago
  I think it's sort of a type of double standard where you say that "your side" is only acting out of fear/confusion/emotion/ignorance/etc but the "other side" has a long, complicated game plan that is surely going to fail, and everything they do is committed towards their bad plan, so you feel the need to "call them out" on it. You can't really "call someone out" in the same way if they are just confused or upset, rather than evil.
- rayiner 5y ago
  I think intersectional thinking clouds their understanding of the power relationship. Ordinarily, a public health person recognize non-college rural people as a disadvantaged group, and understand that these people may have less trust, be working with poor information, etc. Getting those people to use available health services is Public Health 101. But in an intersectional analysis, “non-college rural whites” is near the top of the “oppressor” hierarchy. I think that causes people to perceive their attacks as “punching up” against more powerful people who are being willfully malicious.