Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

gobbo t1_ja9c5mh wrote

Reply to comment by DxLaughRiot in Universal ethics/basic law for all people & global moral education: A new way to sustainability and peace? by fortin1984

I am pretty sure this is an excellent example of "perfect is the enemy of good".

Sometimes you just have to get shit done and compromises are necessary. Again, alignment is not necessarily about lining things up perfectly.

1

DxLaughRiot t1_ja9dh5c wrote

I’m trying to say we can’t even figure out perfect something as simple as “don’t sexually abuse children”. That was supposed to be easy!

More what I’m trying to say is it’s naive to think that with as messy and complicated life is that anyone will ever agree on a universal moral framework. Humanity has tried to for millennia, and typically what happens when people try to trot out their new super awesome objective morality is that people go to war over whether it’s right or not.

1

gobbo t1_ja9rky6 wrote

I'm saying

"Pay attention to trends. What you state as impossible is happening incrementally despite the protests of theory."

cf. xeno's paradox; theories limited by excessive parameters will fail.

Also: maybe the universality doesn't need to be as totalizing as you assume for a global ethics platform to succeed. We aren't talking about total consensus; as hominids we are wired to have some kind of minority opposition to keep evolving. In practical terms a consensus can be 'good enough'--how you decide where to draw the lines is an interesting but necessarily drawn out discussion.

2