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Are you asserting that it is your current opinion that slavery was morally OK in the US, because it was morally accepted at the time? (Warning: this is a trap

Are you asserting that it is your current opinion that slavery was morally OK in the US, because it was morally accepted at the time? (Warning: this is a trap question, do not answer yes, the only socially accepted answer is no)

drusepth 5y ago
Not the guy you're responding to, but this trap question seemed like you either misunderstood their comment or are unintentionally putting words in their mouth. Their comment explicitly subscribes to a form of ethical relativism [1], which argues that there is no universal concept of "morally right" or "morally wrong", and that morals are determined solely by the society judging them at that time. [1] >Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativist, there are no universal moral standards -- standards that can be universally applied to all peoples at all times. The only moral standards against which a society's practices can be judged are its own. If ethical relativism is correct, there can be no common framework for resolving moral disputes or for reaching agreement on ethical matters among members of different societies. >https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/ethical-relativism/ https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision... It is not a particularly helpful take in an ethical debate (which this whole privacy thread is) outside of making a populist argument ("if everything thinks X is morally acceptable, then it is; who are you to say it's not?"). That said, I'm not sure I'd want to make the loaded comparison of equating "taking notes of who does what in your house" to slavery. One of these things is very clearly significantly worse than the other.
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  Right, I'm saying moral relativism ends up in inacceptable or at least widely not accepted answers as soon as you apply it to charged topics. It sounded to me like they were making a relativism argument, and I wanted to highlight this - to give them the opportunity to avoid saying that slavery is acceptable (even in the past) - while at the same time warning them against walking into this position unintentionally. I'm not saying it should be unacceptable, relativism is an interesting position with some upsides, such as that the future, if relativist, will not judge us harshly for our undoubtedly manifold transgressions by their standard, but "slavery was okay actually" is still something that one should, if at all, say with deliberate intent, not as an accidental implication. edit: To clarify my own view, I think that inasmuch as we now think that slavery was wrong, we have gained understanding - that slavery was just as wrong at the time, at least that it followed from moral precepts that were already believed, but this fact was obscured by the social and economic reality that people lived in. Evidence for this would be that people were already arriving at the view that slavery was wrong based on reasoning that matches, in hindsight, our own. A good candidate for a similar moral mistake that we'd be making is, of course, the meat industry - meat is tasty and vegetarianism is effort. But I would expect the future to condemn meat-eating for the same reasons that vegetarians today condemn meat-eating, indicating moral progress (or at least technological progress reducing moral effort) rather than value drift. I'm not sure that morality always works that way, to be clear, but I do think it works that way in these specific cases.
brnaftr361 5y ago
Dru, I'm gonna take an adversarial point of view here. Wrong is wrong, and the magnitudes aren't really comparable at the resolution of the individual. At the maximum, according to Statista, there were about 4mn slaves. There are about 5bn people online, out of what is projected to be 8bn. While there are certainly cultural boundaries, that 5bn almost certainly interfaces with Google. So taking a step back and looking at the magnitude implied by the scale, and the outsized power of Google in virtually every facet of society, I wonder if it really is stepping out of line. Keyword dragnets, indefensible tracking... What's next?
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  Purely numerically comparing it, assuming slavery counts as a life spent in suffering, and there's a 1:1000 factor, given a forty year life expectancy, Google must cause the equivalent of 14 slavery-equivalent-suffering-days or more to be worse. How many days of back-breaking labor and abuse would you put in to get freedom from Google tracking for the rest of your life? For me at three days, it'd be arguable; three weeks would be a stretch. (Of course, I have no actual experience to compare.)

drusepth 5y ago

Not the guy you're responding to, but this trap question seemed like you either misunderstood their comment or are unintentionally putting words in their mouth. Their comment explicitly subscribes to a form of ethical relativism [1], which argues that there is no universal concept of "morally right" or "morally wrong", and that morals are determined solely by the society judging them at that time. [1] >Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativist, there are no universal moral standards -- standards that can be universally applied to all peoples at all times. The only moral standards against which a society's practices can be judged are its own. If ethical relativism is correct, there can be no common framework for resolving moral disputes or for reaching agreement on ethical matters among members of different societies. >https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/ethical-relativism/ https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision... It is not a particularly helpful take in an ethical debate (which this whole privacy thread is) outside of making a populist argument ("if everything thinks X is morally acceptable, then it is; who are you to say it's not?"). That said, I'm not sure I'd want to make the loaded comparison of equating "taking notes of who does what in your house" to slavery. One of these things is very clearly significantly worse than the other.

FeepingCreature 5y ago
Right, I'm saying moral relativism ends up in inacceptable or at least widely not accepted answers as soon as you apply it to charged topics. It sounded to me like they were making a relativism argument, and I wanted to highlight this - to give them the opportunity to avoid saying that slavery is acceptable (even in the past) - while at the same time warning them against walking into this position unintentionally. I'm not saying it should be unacceptable, relativism is an interesting position with some upsides, such as that the future, if relativist, will not judge us harshly for our undoubtedly manifold transgressions by their standard, but "slavery was okay actually" is still something that one should, if at all, say with deliberate intent, not as an accidental implication. edit: To clarify my own view, I think that inasmuch as we now think that slavery was wrong, we have gained understanding - that slavery was just as wrong at the time, at least that it followed from moral precepts that were already believed, but this fact was obscured by the social and economic reality that people lived in. Evidence for this would be that people were already arriving at the view that slavery was wrong based on reasoning that matches, in hindsight, our own. A good candidate for a similar moral mistake that we'd be making is, of course, the meat industry - meat is tasty and vegetarianism is effort. But I would expect the future to condemn meat-eating for the same reasons that vegetarians today condemn meat-eating, indicating moral progress (or at least technological progress reducing moral effort) rather than value drift. I'm not sure that morality always works that way, to be clear, but I do think it works that way in these specific cases.

brnaftr361 5y ago

Dru, I'm gonna take an adversarial point of view here. Wrong is wrong, and the magnitudes aren't really comparable at the resolution of the individual. At the maximum, according to Statista, there were about 4mn slaves. There are about 5bn people online, out of what is projected to be 8bn. While there are certainly cultural boundaries, that 5bn almost certainly interfaces with Google. So taking a step back and looking at the magnitude implied by the scale, and the outsized power of Google in virtually every facet of society, I wonder if it really is stepping out of line. Keyword dragnets, indefensible tracking... What's next?

FeepingCreature 5y ago
Purely numerically comparing it, assuming slavery counts as a life spent in suffering, and there's a 1:1000 factor, given a forty year life expectancy, Google must cause the equivalent of 14 slavery-equivalent-suffering-days or more to be worse. How many days of back-breaking labor and abuse would you put in to get freedom from Google tracking for the rest of your life? For me at three days, it'd be arguable; three weeks would be a stretch. (Of course, I have no actual experience to compare.)