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> Come on now. It's just as flawed now, just in different ways I'm not from the US so I try to avoid having strong opinions on US issues... But is it really ju

> Come on now. It's just as flawed now, just in different ways I'm not from the US so I try to avoid having strong opinions on US issues... But is it really just as flawed now? I mean, there's no slavery anymore, there's women's rights, and all races are legally equal (even if in reality it doesn't work out that way). This seems like an improvement, despite massive flaws still existing.

perlgeek 2y ago
A charitable interpretation of OP's statement would be: You cannot really use lawfulness as a measure of morality, and this is true now just as much as it was back then. Or a different take could be: moral progress happens all the time, but the law often lags behind, so the delta between our moral ideas and the law is just as big as it has been in the past.
maeil 2y ago
Just to be clear, the answer to this doesn't impact the point I was making, so it doesn't matter for the topic at hand. But entertaining the question: Who says there haven't been new flaws introduced since? Note how I mentioned the execution of the laws specifically. There was, for instance, a point in time where anti-trust laws were upheld much more vigilantly, despite the same law being on the books. Laws only matter if the people tasked with upholding them choose to do so. And their effect changes immensely depending on how the people who apply them, interpret them. Both can and do drastically change over time. But even if you argue that modern laws as executed in practice are "less flawed" than in a certain point in the past, it doesn't really make any difference. Given that reasoning, one would argue that at the time of civil rights it was already less flawed than at the time of slavery. Yet you'd probably agree the civil rights movement was necessary, the laws at the time were flawed, and the vast majority of cases of breaking those laws to further the movement was the right thing to do and positively impacted society. Now let's talk about semantics. Is a tshirt dyed in RGB (255,0,0) just as red as one dyed in (254,1,0)? There isn't a correct answer to this. When viewed by a person, without knowing the RGB values, they will say both tshirts are entirely red, without one being redder than the other. If you put a gun to their head asking "which one is redder", they'd pick one at random at best. So are they just as red? To a human they absolutely are, to a computer they aren't, but we're here discussing among humans - hopefully!
- esperent 2y ago
  > Who says there haven't been new flaws introduced since I'm absolutely sure there have been new flaws introduced since the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage. My point is that those flaws don't seem, to me, to be just as bad as slavery.
saikia81 2y ago
Reminder that slavery is not banned in case you have comitted a crime in the US. See the constitution.

perlgeek 2y ago

A charitable interpretation of OP's statement would be: You cannot really use lawfulness as a measure of morality, and this is true now just as much as it was back then. Or a different take could be: moral progress happens all the time, but the law often lags behind, so the delta between our moral ideas and the law is just as big as it has been in the past.

maeil 2y ago

Just to be clear, the answer to this doesn't impact the point I was making, so it doesn't matter for the topic at hand. But entertaining the question: Who says there haven't been new flaws introduced since? Note how I mentioned the execution of the laws specifically. There was, for instance, a point in time where anti-trust laws were upheld much more vigilantly, despite the same law being on the books. Laws only matter if the people tasked with upholding them choose to do so. And their effect changes immensely depending on how the people who apply them, interpret them. Both can and do drastically change over time. But even if you argue that modern laws as executed in practice are "less flawed" than in a certain point in the past, it doesn't really make any difference. Given that reasoning, one would argue that at the time of civil rights it was already less flawed than at the time of slavery. Yet you'd probably agree the civil rights movement was necessary, the laws at the time were flawed, and the vast majority of cases of breaking those laws to further the movement was the right thing to do and positively impacted society. Now let's talk about semantics. Is a tshirt dyed in RGB (255,0,0) just as red as one dyed in (254,1,0)? There isn't a correct answer to this. When viewed by a person, without knowing the RGB values, they will say both tshirts are entirely red, without one being redder than the other. If you put a gun to their head asking "which one is redder", they'd pick one at random at best. So are they just as red? To a human they absolutely are, to a computer they aren't, but we're here discussing among humans - hopefully!

esperent 2y ago
> Who says there haven't been new flaws introduced since I'm absolutely sure there have been new flaws introduced since the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage. My point is that those flaws don't seem, to me, to be just as bad as slavery.

saikia81 2y ago

Reminder that slavery is not banned in case you have comitted a crime in the US. See the constitution.