4 ms·

The issue with ethics is people make up plenty of conflicting and unsupportable ethics all the time. The law has evolved to handle more balance and stability to

The issue with ethics is people make up plenty of conflicting and unsupportable ethics all the time. The law has evolved to handle more balance and stability to help people with competing ideas of ethics live together. They're also clearly not "completely different things." That would imply no overlap, yet I find laws embody plenty of things I find ethical. If you find nothing in the law ethical then I certainly do not want your ethics. So I'll gladly take law on the whole over a person on the internet's as hoc flavor of ethics.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago
A hundred and fifty years ago, not only was it legal to kill American-Indians, but the US and various state governments were paying people to. This ranged from sponsoring militias in California slaughtering entire settlements to paying individuals in Minnesota a $75 bounty per Dakota scalp. Even in that time, there were many who could see that regardless of laws, the slaughter was not ethical. Others, committed atrocities for profit and consoled themselves that they were following the law. It’s generally a bad sign when someone answers questions of ethics with law. People constrained only by the law with no further ethical concerns do terrible things, right up to the limit of what the legal system they live under allows. To be clear, I am not claiming sama is unconcerned with ethics. I’m pushing back against conflating ethics with legality.
- SideQuark 4y ago
  When people pull one post selected, cherry picked example to argue for a general trend, it baffles me. The proper way to do evidence on the pros/cons of a system is to take all evidence. Yes there's outliers. But that's all they are. As ethics change, laws change, and vice versa. Neither exists or even is workable without the other. What is ethical in one time or place or situation changes, just like laws, and for the same reason- they're cultural constructs that evolve. As to claiming ethics is superior to law, history is also filled with people having different ethics going outside the law and causing great harm, genocides, and wars. Ethics is not defined in any universal sense. One could argue every lawbreaker has different ethics than those not breaking laws. Again, I prefer a society where people follow societally agreed upon laws over ones where everyone choose their own ethics and acts accordingly.
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    Law is a good thing, just not sufficient. Every legal system has holes, and society is much stronger if there are additional backstops to bad behavior.
    - SideQuark 4y ago
      Agreed. However, since everyone has different ethics, it's only when enough people believe the same thing is morally correct that it often becomes law. Most of the bad stuff we decry now happened because the masses found it ethical. And certainly plenty we now find ethical will be considered unethical in the future. But of the two, only law is stable enough to run a society. It's what balances all the variety of ethical issues between beliefs.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago

A hundred and fifty years ago, not only was it legal to kill American-Indians, but the US and various state governments were paying people to. This ranged from sponsoring militias in California slaughtering entire settlements to paying individuals in Minnesota a $75 bounty per Dakota scalp. Even in that time, there were many who could see that regardless of laws, the slaughter was not ethical. Others, committed atrocities for profit and consoled themselves that they were following the law. It’s generally a bad sign when someone answers questions of ethics with law. People constrained only by the law with no further ethical concerns do terrible things, right up to the limit of what the legal system they live under allows. To be clear, I am not claiming sama is unconcerned with ethics. I’m pushing back against conflating ethics with legality.

SideQuark 4y ago
When people pull one post selected, cherry picked example to argue for a general trend, it baffles me. The proper way to do evidence on the pros/cons of a system is to take all evidence. Yes there's outliers. But that's all they are. As ethics change, laws change, and vice versa. Neither exists or even is workable without the other. What is ethical in one time or place or situation changes, just like laws, and for the same reason- they're cultural constructs that evolve. As to claiming ethics is superior to law, history is also filled with people having different ethics going outside the law and causing great harm, genocides, and wars. Ethics is not defined in any universal sense. One could argue every lawbreaker has different ethics than those not breaking laws. Again, I prefer a society where people follow societally agreed upon laws over ones where everyone choose their own ethics and acts accordingly.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  Law is a good thing, just not sufficient. Every legal system has holes, and society is much stronger if there are additional backstops to bad behavior.
  - SideQuark 4y ago
    Agreed. However, since everyone has different ethics, it's only when enough people believe the same thing is morally correct that it often becomes law. Most of the bad stuff we decry now happened because the masses found it ethical. And certainly plenty we now find ethical will be considered unethical in the future. But of the two, only law is stable enough to run a society. It's what balances all the variety of ethical issues between beliefs.