4 ms·

I don't quite see where you provided examples before this comment, sorry, could you repeat them? I looked through the thread and see you asserting we don't need

I don't quite see where you provided examples before this comment, sorry, could you repeat them? I looked through the thread and see you asserting we don't need religions anymore, but not where you give concrete worked examples of moral questions and how to resolve them with science. "You can use science to debate if Nagasaki should have been nuked" I'm not really sure how. It would be interesting to see an attempt. Note that doing this without relying on ambient moral principles like "killing people is bad" is probably impossible but those moral principles don't come from science, as I point out, hence why I don't see how to do it. "We have laws that prohibit harming others and they don't need religious justification." Yes I thought you might go there. It doesn't work. Those laws are derived from religious codes originally. Also, the law is not a moral code, the law is supposed to implement moral codes. If you believe morality flows from law as the original source, you have to believe that lawmakers are inherently more morally capable than the people they rule. Moreover you cannot have such a thing as a tyrant because the moment they achieve power and change the law, whatever they do becomes axiomatically moral and therefore they are not a tyrant. Are you really going to argue that? No way are most people going to go anywhere near a claim like that, quite the opposite, it is often argued that lawmakers are less moral than regular people! "Harming a member of society is against everyones interest because we are part of society and we optimize for a good quality of life of society as that optimizes our own" This isn't a logical argument from first principles. Harming someone else can very much be in your interest in all sorts of situations. For it to be considered immoral, there must be some higher justification that states that your clear self-interest in harming an enemy is subservient to some other principle. Claims like "we optimize for a good quality of life of society" don't mean anything concrete. It's just restating a belief that the original position is morally correct in different words. Every tyrant in history has always claimed to be acting for the betterment of society and how can you argue otherwise without some system deeper than "this is morally good because we say it's best for everyone therefore it is"? That's what I mean by it being difficult. All the obvious answers just lead you in circles. "Your claim that animals kill each other all the time: killing within their own group is rare. Take two random animals from the same species and put them together in a room and see if they will kill each other." So by analogy it's OK to kill other races but not your own? That's certainly a moral code that has existed in the past, but it's not one that is accepted today. But it's an odd argument because it's really common that animals will fight and injure each other within the same species, sometimes fatally. Usually fights over territory or mating dominance. Even in pack animals there are fights over who gets the mates. By coincidence I was at a zoo just two days ago and they had a few cages where there was only a single animal, with an explanation that they had to do this because if they put more than one animal of the same type in the same cage they would fight for dominance. It's normal e.g. the antlers on a deer are for fighting. One of them was a type of crane, and the explanation was that cranes pick a single mate for life and this one had picked "Man", so would fight with any other crane. Animal jealousy! "You serious claim that the majority just blindly believes in science but wouldn't admit it?" After what we saw in the last two years! Wow yes, absolutely I seriously claim that. The amount of pseudo-scientific garbage that the population swallowed about COVID is just incredible. Claims that fell apart the moment you read the papers or even just thought about them were routinely passed off and accepted by the population because they came from "experts". It is one of the major themes of our age.

eis 4y ago
> I don't quite see where you provided examples before this comment, sorry, could you repeat them? I looked through the thread and see you asserting we don't need religions anymore, but not where you give concrete worked examples of moral questions and how to resolve them with science. I gave an example right in my comment to which you replied. Further explanation below. Another example was when al_mandi asked me to give an example how rape can be argued against. > This isn't a logical argument from first principles. Harming someone else can very much be in your interest in all sorts of situations. For it to be considered immoral, there must be some higher justification that states that your clear self-interest in harming an enemy is subservient to some other principle. I think I see where your misunderstanding is. That you can find a specific situation where harming someone else can be in your interest does not invalidate the argument that says so in the grand scheme of things and in most situations. Nearly nothing is absolute. The same logical fallacy has been shown in this HN discussion about a dozen times. A general rule can be true even if in a specific case it does not apply. Killing someone in the general case is bad but in specific cases it can be good. Take for example a suicide bomber running into a crowd. That killing is bad in general can be argued for with logic and without resulting to religion. It should be obvious that killing in general will harm your own chances of survival in general. I can deduce that with my own brain and don't need a prophet to tell me. You can ask me to go the full chain of logic back to first principles but you know full well that's a lot to do. Can we see the desire to not get killed as something given not by religion? For example: if you show that science can not explain a certain thing then that does not mean science can not explain anything at all. If B follows A then NOT B does not follow NOT A. A triangle is a geometric shape. It does not follow that if something is not a triangle then it's not a geometric shape. > I'm not really sure how. It would be interesting to see an attempt. Note that doing this without relying on ambient moral principles like "killing people is bad" is probably impossible but those moral principles don't come from science, as I point out, hence why I don't see how to do it. The claim is that morals can only come from religion but I argued and showed that this is not the case. Your claim is that something ALWAYS applies (e.g. ONLY religion can bring morals). If I can show a single counter example then I invalidate your claim. If I claim that something is true ON AVERAGE and you show one counter example then that does NOT invalidate my claim. If you say that ONLY a 6 sided dice can throw a 4 and I have an 8 sided dice and throw a 4 then you lose. If I say on average you will roll at least a 2 with your dice then rolling a 1 does not prove me wrong. > Claims like "we optimize for a good quality of life of society" don't mean anything concrete. It's just restating a belief that the original position is morally correct in different words. Every tyrant in history has always claimed to be acting for the betterment of society and how can you argue otherwise without some system deeper than "this is morally good because we say it's best for everyone therefore it is"? This is simple evolution. If we don't optimize for life in our society then we have a clear disadvantage compared to other societies that do so. Animals follow the same and they don't need religion for that. > So by analogy it's OK to kill other races but not your own? No, you again fell into the same logical fallacy. You can see two races as individual members of a larger society. Put random animals from different species into a room and most of them will also not kill each other. That does not mean some of them will not kill the other. And the fact that some will kill the other does not mean they all will do so. > But it's an odd argument because it's really common that animals will fight and injure each other within the same species, sometimes fatally. Usually fights over territory or mating dominance. Even in pack animals there are fights over who gets the mates. By coincidence I was at a zoo just two days ago and they had a few cages where there was only a single animal, with an explanation that they had to do this because if they put more than one animal of the same type in the same cage they would fight for dominance. It's normal e.g. the antlers on a deer are for fighting. One of them was a type of crane, and the explanation was that cranes pick a single mate for life and this one had picked "Man", so would fight with any other crane. Animal jealousy! Some and sometimes. As explained, that does not invalidate the argument. You can't claim that the majority of animals constantly fight within their species. > After what we saw in the last two years! Wow yes, absolutely I seriously claim that. The amount of pseudo-scientific garbage that the population swallowed about COVID is just incredible. Claims that fell apart the moment you read the papers or even just thought about them were routinely passed off and accepted by the population because they came from "experts". It is one of the major themes of our age. Yea the past two years have been... difficult in many respects. But again, same logical issue. It does not mean that they always blindly believe in all of science.

eis 4y ago

> I don't quite see where you provided examples before this comment, sorry, could you repeat them? I looked through the thread and see you asserting we don't need religions anymore, but not where you give concrete worked examples of moral questions and how to resolve them with science. I gave an example right in my comment to which you replied. Further explanation below. Another example was when al_mandi asked me to give an example how rape can be argued against. > This isn't a logical argument from first principles. Harming someone else can very much be in your interest in all sorts of situations. For it to be considered immoral, there must be some higher justification that states that your clear self-interest in harming an enemy is subservient to some other principle. I think I see where your misunderstanding is. That you can find a specific situation where harming someone else can be in your interest does not invalidate the argument that says so in the grand scheme of things and in most situations. Nearly nothing is absolute. The same logical fallacy has been shown in this HN discussion about a dozen times. A general rule can be true even if in a specific case it does not apply. Killing someone in the general case is bad but in specific cases it can be good. Take for example a suicide bomber running into a crowd. That killing is bad in general can be argued for with logic and without resulting to religion. It should be obvious that killing in general will harm your own chances of survival in general. I can deduce that with my own brain and don't need a prophet to tell me. You can ask me to go the full chain of logic back to first principles but you know full well that's a lot to do. Can we see the desire to not get killed as something given not by religion? For example: if you show that science can not explain a certain thing then that does not mean science can not explain anything at all. If B follows A then NOT B does not follow NOT A. A triangle is a geometric shape. It does not follow that if something is not a triangle then it's not a geometric shape. > I'm not really sure how. It would be interesting to see an attempt. Note that doing this without relying on ambient moral principles like "killing people is bad" is probably impossible but those moral principles don't come from science, as I point out, hence why I don't see how to do it. The claim is that morals can only come from religion but I argued and showed that this is not the case. Your claim is that something ALWAYS applies (e.g. ONLY religion can bring morals). If I can show a single counter example then I invalidate your claim. If I claim that something is true ON AVERAGE and you show one counter example then that does NOT invalidate my claim. If you say that ONLY a 6 sided dice can throw a 4 and I have an 8 sided dice and throw a 4 then you lose. If I say on average you will roll at least a 2 with your dice then rolling a 1 does not prove me wrong. > Claims like "we optimize for a good quality of life of society" don't mean anything concrete. It's just restating a belief that the original position is morally correct in different words. Every tyrant in history has always claimed to be acting for the betterment of society and how can you argue otherwise without some system deeper than "this is morally good because we say it's best for everyone therefore it is"? This is simple evolution. If we don't optimize for life in our society then we have a clear disadvantage compared to other societies that do so. Animals follow the same and they don't need religion for that. > So by analogy it's OK to kill other races but not your own? No, you again fell into the same logical fallacy. You can see two races as individual members of a larger society. Put random animals from different species into a room and most of them will also not kill each other. That does not mean some of them will not kill the other. And the fact that some will kill the other does not mean they all will do so. > But it's an odd argument because it's really common that animals will fight and injure each other within the same species, sometimes fatally. Usually fights over territory or mating dominance. Even in pack animals there are fights over who gets the mates. By coincidence I was at a zoo just two days ago and they had a few cages where there was only a single animal, with an explanation that they had to do this because if they put more than one animal of the same type in the same cage they would fight for dominance. It's normal e.g. the antlers on a deer are for fighting. One of them was a type of crane, and the explanation was that cranes pick a single mate for life and this one had picked "Man", so would fight with any other crane. Animal jealousy! Some and sometimes. As explained, that does not invalidate the argument. You can't claim that the majority of animals constantly fight within their species. > After what we saw in the last two years! Wow yes, absolutely I seriously claim that. The amount of pseudo-scientific garbage that the population swallowed about COVID is just incredible. Claims that fell apart the moment you read the papers or even just thought about them were routinely passed off and accepted by the population because they came from "experts". It is one of the major themes of our age. Yea the past two years have been... difficult in many respects. But again, same logical issue. It does not mean that they always blindly believe in all of science.