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And after reading your entry I viewed the photos of all these bloodsuckers and ethical CEOs enjoying Sean Parker's dbag-fuelled taxidermy party at Davos. Moral

And after reading your entry I viewed the photos of all these bloodsuckers and ethical CEOs enjoying Sean Parker's dbag-fuelled taxidermy party at Davos. Morality and ethics don't count for anything in a contemporary society where punishment for misdeeds exists only for those who cannot afford to buy their freedom.

ChuckMcM 14y ago
Being ethical is something you do for you, not society.
- shawn-butler 14y ago
  Probably not the right forum to discuss it but I'm not sure that's really true. You might be interested in post-70s studies concerning the primate theory of mind in this respect. Primates seem naturally programmed to steal but only when they think they can get away with it. I have been following the work of Laurie Santos at Yale on the question of primate theory of mind and her studies of capuchin monkeys. Her work is highly experimental and interesting and she is very engaging.[0] She set up field studies to test whether primates use knowledge of whether they are being observed to decide when it's ok to steal and it is clear that they do. [1] When your family is hungry, you will steal so long as you believe you can get away with it and not deprive them further. Primates want to be seen by peers as ethical because it is advantageous (it will be easier to steal in the future) but in reality generally are deceitful at every opportunity. It seems that we are indeed generally ethical in relations because of cultural discipline/punish power dynamics, not out of any sense of moral duty. I think the only way to rescue Cicero is to discover the underlying mathematical model by which doing the "right" thing and the "advantageous" thing are always the same. If no such model exists, it's just so much hyperbole rambling of parent to child. [0] http://www.yale.edu/caplab/Main/Publications.html http://www.yale.edu/caplab/Main/Publications.html [1] http://youtu.be/0xp_GwAKZnY?t=3m47s http://youtu.be/0xp_GwAKZnY?t=3m47s

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Being ethical is something you do for you, not society.

shawn-butler 14y ago
Probably not the right forum to discuss it but I'm not sure that's really true. You might be interested in post-70s studies concerning the primate theory of mind in this respect. Primates seem naturally programmed to steal but only when they think they can get away with it. I have been following the work of Laurie Santos at Yale on the question of primate theory of mind and her studies of capuchin monkeys. Her work is highly experimental and interesting and she is very engaging.[0] She set up field studies to test whether primates use knowledge of whether they are being observed to decide when it's ok to steal and it is clear that they do. [1] When your family is hungry, you will steal so long as you believe you can get away with it and not deprive them further. Primates want to be seen by peers as ethical because it is advantageous (it will be easier to steal in the future) but in reality generally are deceitful at every opportunity. It seems that we are indeed generally ethical in relations because of cultural discipline/punish power dynamics, not out of any sense of moral duty. I think the only way to rescue Cicero is to discover the underlying mathematical model by which doing the "right" thing and the "advantageous" thing are always the same. If no such model exists, it's just so much hyperbole rambling of parent to child. [0] http://www.yale.edu/caplab/Main/Publications.html http://www.yale.edu/caplab/Main/Publications.html [1] http://youtu.be/0xp_GwAKZnY?t=3m47s http://youtu.be/0xp_GwAKZnY?t=3m47s