8 Impossible Thought Experiments - Cosmic Skeptic

[@ChrisWillx]

Hello all. I hope you enjoyed watching me squirm in confusion. Here’s the timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:35 What’s the Point of Discussing Ethics? 04:54 Rediscovering Ancient Truths 13:24 Is Ethics About Minimising Suffering? 24:46 Reductio Ad Absurdum 28:09 Is it Right to Harm People for the Greater Good? 41:50 Moral Responsibility Vs Ability to Act Differently 1:06:01 Unfairness of Imbalances in Wealth & Intelligence 1:17:28 Do Non-Smokers Deserve Medical Treatment More Than Smokers? 1:29:11 Where is the Source of Goodness? 1:33:37 Where to Find Alex

[@jordanpetersonclips8408]

I take some issue with these arguments, genetics alone does not determine how well you do academically, for example lets imagine you are born with the highest IQ of any living human being ever to have lived but you're born into poverty of a roaming nomad tribe, no one teaches you to read or write, in that case your not getting into Harvard or any university for that matter, therefor it isn't only genetics, it's the quality of education and applying yourself within education. Having money to pay for a childs private schooling but the child refuses to study, refuses to apply themselves does not guarantee strong academic results either therefor they will not be accepted into university.

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

@@jordanpetersonclips8408 Kindly repeat that in ENGLISH, Miss.☝️

[@chrissavage1449]

if someone was going to launch every nuclear missile unless i killed an innocent person, i'd just kill myself.

[@samspade1418]

Interesting but not confusing to me. The premise of maximizing pleasure as opposed to suffering is flawed. The two don't necessarily correlate.

[@AnonymousWon-uu5yn]

If all the nuclear weapons were guaranteed to kill every single life form on earth, then to that question I would have every single life form be killed in order for there to be no life forms that were victims of existing and suffering against their will. And then since no life forms existed then that would be just fine because then no life form would know or care that they didn't exist.

[@lindybeige]

It's the sign of a good conversation that I kept wanting to interrupt to make my own contribution.

[@robertwhiteley-yv1sy]

Or that someone is missing the point

[@brixan...]

I'd watch a Lindybeige + Alex O'Connor video

[@lindybeige]

So would I!@@brixan...

[@brettpid6416]

I really enjoy your videos always something interesting to learn

[@winterphilosophy3900]

​@@lindybeigeYou should bring him on to your show!

[@trock7542]

If somebody had a tumor and reconciled Newtonian physics and quantum physics? Do they get credit? Or the tumor?

[@mr.greengold8236]

Lololol

[@quasarsupernova9643]

You mean General Relativity and Quantum Physics. The tumor of course ...

[@LeanAndMean44]

Both.

[@LeanAndMean44]

@@quasarsupernova9643 even with my limited knowledge I can say there’s a difference between a theory within the topic of physics and the whole understanding of physics itself.

[@Williamwilliam1531]

It depends on where the tumor is.

[@projectjayme1109]

I’ve been watching Alex since his channel first started. What an engaging conversation this was! Thank you for adding such value to the monotony of my chores today.. I had to keep going back 15 seconds so I could think more deeply about some of these proposals. Just wonderful, as always.

[@jakalair]

One of the most challenging ethical problems I ever has was jury duty. It is fascinating to look at the breakdown of ethics in this video, but it is paralyzing when I had to face these things and make a decision with 11 other people in order to shape the lives of people I had never met before that trial. I just want to thank you two for sitting down and having this conversation.

[@owenpalmer8242]

12 angry men

[@chrisevans1255]

I hear you! I found my jury duty to be a depressing and somewhat alarming experience. The lack of rational, reasonable or empathic thought among some of my fellow jurors was a stark reminder of how weak our collective social wisdom is.

[@scotthullinger4684]

Any jury is better than any government controlled and initiated alternative. The goal of evil governments is specifically to exercise unrighteous dominion over citizens. Democrats are a perfect example of this, and all Democrats are overwhelmingly currently EVIL. The average person is not evil, or at least not nearly as evil. The general population includes all kinds, not just Democrats, and all juries supposedly are composed of a wide variety of individuals whose goal is surely NOT to allow the State to control people in unwieldy unrighteous ways.

[@scotthullinger4684]

jakalair - - I for one would surely have NO problem whatsoever shaping the lives of possibly evil people who would otherwise never face the consequences for the most serious of their crimes. The only breakdown of ethics occurs when a jury might be composed of essentially evil people whose goal has nothing to do with making correct determinations regarding guilt with regard to serious criminal activity. Nothing goes wrong as long as righteous people are engaged in the process. The problem ... ? More and more people are the very furthest thing from genuinely righteous.

[@jakalair]

@@scotthullinger4684 I am glad you have that self assuredness. As I get older I feel that words like "evil" and "righteous" are not as cut and dry as I once believed.

[@TheHAM1980]

"We both know that's a lie" Classic

[@againsteternity110]

Respect for bringing Alex on man. Gonna love this!

[@ProgressIsTheOnlyEvolution]

I really wish he wouldn't, the world would be better of without men like Alex, since people are too stupid to see through his pretentious bs.

[@CurtisWal]

I've listened to literally thousands of hours of podcasts featuring some of the greatest public intellectuals in the world. Chris and Alex really broke my brain in a way I've never before experienced. Way to go fellas 👏

[@joannware6228]

"The correct conclusion about the Bible is that it is the only true and accurate history of the Universe, whether you accept it, or not. The necessary component is faith to embrace spiritual matters, which are by divine ordination, beyond human ability to fully fathom… (8) For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. (9) For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9 (KJV) " Since the laws of physics are consistent throughout the entire spectrum of the Lord’s created majesty, the Lord Jesus Christ remains in control of every molecule in the approximate two hundred billion galaxies we know of and all other matter outside mankind’s field of discovery. Conversely, while mankind may recall historic events, and have desires for the future, we actually have very limited control over the fulfillment of those plans, and mankind’s solitary creation is the computer virus! The only time you have any measure of control over is this very moment, so what are you doing with it? You must question the sanity of any who would presume to equate the Lord’s Sovereignty with our stunted capabilities!" Ken Axelson "Thought for the Day"

[@wordscythe4450]

This has been one of the most interesting conversations I have ever experienced. No superlatives necessary.

[@thomaslitherland5742]

"Most interesting" is a superlative.

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

Interesting and uninteresting are RELATIVE. 😉

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

@@melanshia Good Girl! 👌 Incidentally, are you VEGAN? 🌱

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

@@melanshia but at least I am able to correctly spell the SIMPLEST word in the English language ("I"). 🥱

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

@@melanshia Kindly repeat that in ENGLISH, Miss.☝️

[@marishasveganworld2240]

Thank you! Can’t wait to listen to this podcast. Glad to see Alex here!

[@kencanty23]

When they talked about considering everything ethical before action makes me think of Chidi from the good place, great show, good way to visualize ethics

[@awesomeface9081]

Moral ethics always reminds me of Chidi! I loved that show

[@thossi09]

It's been a long time since I watched the first couple of episodes. I don't remember what streaming service had them, but for whatever reason I decided to cancel my subscription before I could move forward. Was Chidi the sort of person who was paralysed by having to consider every ethical perspective before acting?

[@tmozzz]

@@thossi09yes! He read all the books on ethics , and at the end of the day because he was so well informed on ethics, he could never truly make a decision on anything because of his over analysis on everything .

[@buckfozos5554]

O'Connor is the Steve Vai of intellectual shredding. The dynamic between these two is especially satisfying. Keep up the stellar work Chris.

[@gavwan]

Discussions like this remind me how sophisticated and shaped over time the english legal system is: Act vs omission, chain of causation, duty of care, diminished responsibility, reasonable man standard, binding precedent. Philosophy applied to some degree as guidelines for a society. Not perfect but that's why it evolves.

[@dreyfuss06]

Absolutely love these videos. The landscapes. The commentary. You’re commentary is so underrated. they’re also so relaxing

[@RevoltingPeasant123]

I think this is true of many disciplines, if not all. That as you learn more and more you realise just quite how little you do know, and more importantly what you can know. I've certainly found this to be the case with my field, economics. I think Friedrich Hayek may have summed it up perfectly when he said; "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." Whilst this statement pertained to economics, I think there is something in it that applies to everything.

[@kennyehm2004]

100% agree.

[@kappaprimus]

Krugers effect basically

[@Illlium]

That's why I think the best approach to any topic is approaching it from an almost Socratic position of informed ignorance. Sure, you know some things, other things you might just think you know, and there's a whole world of things that you're either unaware of your ignorance of or are unknowable by conventional means of the time. The key as always is asking the right questions.

[@jakecostanza802]

@@Illlium how would you know what the right questions are?

[@joannware6228]

@@kennyehm2004 Me too.

[@callumsharman4980]

Ive listened through all of the podcasts of you guys together in the last 2 days... absolutely love them!

[@handcrafted30]

Chris to Alex - what’s the meaning of life? Alex to Chris - Dude, how do I get chicks? There is real equity to this friendship.

[@JohnnyPlsCumMe]

Alex to Chris: How do I get a chick? Me: Yuhhh!! Looking for me huh

[@mr.greengold8236]

Yo where did Alex ask it??

[@handcrafted30]

@Vebunkd Profound.

[@smilloww2095]

@@JohnnyPlsCumMe lmao

[@joannware6228]

It's an amazing phenomena. Atheists egos are so enormous they believe they can reinvent the universe

[@stephenbrubaker5904]

Couple ideas. 1) Endochrinologist Robert Lustig notes that there is a profound difference between "pleasure" and "satisfaction." Pleasure is caused in the brain by dopamine, its effects are fleeting, it causes addictions, and it can motivate us to substitute pleasure-seeking behaviors for ones that bring more enduring satisfaction. By contrast, satisfaction and joy are cause in the brain by serotonin. A person working to pursue serotonin based satisfactions tends to build strong personal relationships, focus on building good health, and behave in society in generally constructive ways. My guess is that this is closer to what Mills was thinking as the valid aim of utilitarianism. What would happen if this substitution of language and sense occurred today when we talk about it? How would it affect the specific cases used to level criticism at utilitarianism? 2) Early in the twentieth century quantum theory and relativity demonstrated limits in classical physics. At about the same time Kurt Goedel proved that no formal system can be both complete and consistent. Any formal system with the power to state every true proposition in that system is powerful enough to state falsehoods. Why have we not brought philosophy up to the same standard? Why should a trivial case out at the edge of application of a theory necessarily cause the collapse of the whole thing? Why should the whole food distribution system of the world be permanently destroyed when a gnat lands in the potato salad at the July picnic? What if we spent time trying to figure out how various ways of thinking about ethics help us and how they do not? Ayer's work, for example. Thanks for the reminder.

[@Dvnllnvg]

The college admission issue is not just about fairness for the attendees or prospects. It is also about the optimal way to get people who would use the knowledge available at the institution in a way that is beneficial to the wider society. That is why merit here is genuinely better than either equity or simple money aristocracy. The people with the most merit will be the most likely (in this simple scenario - other personality factors aside). To either create or serve in innovative businesses or maybe research and produce more knowledge or medicines etc that the rest of the society then can benefit from. Opening up college in an equitable way to allow "experiences" for the people who do not contribute either by competency or even just money to keep the system going (again, leaving other factors aside) does not benefit society.

[@ohsweetmystery]

Why are these ethicists so obsessed with what they call 'fair'? It's all about the idea that they are the ones to decide what 'fair' is. Playing God, nothing else. A private university is a free market institution. They should make their own criteria and succeed or fail on whatever happens to work.

[@jsbrads1]

@@ohsweetmystery It is actually much worse than that, racial preferences don’t help the people they purport to help, they actually harm minorities. Black students when misplaced in an university with peers they can’t match intellectually, they often feel isolated, fail, drop out and can face a life facing people who don’t believe they earn what they earned. It is also causes racial tension in society.

[@Lexrezende]

How could we measure merit? What is the best way to use the knowledge available in the college to produce benefits to the wider society? I don't believe that quantity of papers published and economicism are adequate approaches to evaluate academic performance and benefits to society. The definition of merit makes no sense at all to me. I don't believe that being born gifted in a family that could afford the good education and the financial stability that I needed to be minimally functional and able to pass the entrance exam, graduate and pass another entrance exam that made it possible for me to have a good and stable career was the result of merit. I believe it was the result of chance.What is the best way to use the knowledge available in the college to produce benefits to the wider society? I also don't believe that the damages caused by my undiagnosed (until I was 45) twice exceptional (gifted and ADHD) condition (anxiety disorders; anguish caused by multipotentiality, perfectionism, inadequacy feelings and incompatibility between an emotional capacity of a child and a cognitive capacity of an adult; struggles with impulse control, maintenance of motivation and chronic procrastination; many health problems, depression etc.), made me a worthless lazy bastard. Chance again.

[@Lexrezende]

@@ohsweetmystery No, it is because what we as society define as fair will determine wich direction the society will take. And if this definition is superficial, lacks critical thinking and disregards complexity, the path chosen can be very unstable and dangerous.

[@Kassidar]

On the "unfairness of imbalances in Wealth & Intelligence" The main crucial point is that someone who gets in and does well because they are intelligent and capable correlates with their ability to perform their job well and that affects society. Meanwhile someone who gets in through bribery or nepotism ,especially someone who could ONLY get in through bribery, nepotism, or affirmative action, is not necessarily going to be competent in the roll they graduate into and are potentially displacing someone who would make a better .

[@raymk]

1:11:15 The premise that everyone can be everything is already wrong and impossible. Just like Chris and Alex said, bringing a flat equality to this injustice world might cause a greater injustice and danger. People do not have the right for everything, and cannot claim what others already have.

[@JohanJonasson]

Haven't heard from Alex in a while. Love listening to him.

[@dickmcwienersonIII]

Listen to his episode with Bart Ehrman

[@bigred8438]

I think there is a huge role to play in teaching values by using metaphors or allegories or analogies. It is almost impossible to teach any new idea without an ability to use metaphor.

[@SineN0mine3]

At the same time it's important, at least with regards to ethics and morals to be able to grounds arguments in real world examples. Otherwise it's easy to fall into the trap of justifying bad actions with good arguments. One of the reasons we've taken such a long time to overcome some of our negative cultural tendencies, like xenophobia for example is because they're easily justified according to big picture idealogies. It's important to remember that these views end up informing our day to day actions, and so we should make sure to reflect these ideas against realistic and likely scenarios that we will actually find ourselves in. From the previous example, you can see how certain views might inform you to act cautiously towards people who are very different to yourself, but if a foreigner moves in next door that belief can lead to real world problems in your life. It's highly unlikely that you'll even be in a scenario where a psychotic terrorist forces you into some moral quandary where you're require to chose between the principle of moral rights and the lives of thousands of innocent people. You're much more likely to have to worry about how to handle interactions with difficult people in your life or how to vote when elections come about. If your moral or ethical framework creates problems on the small scale it's a good reason to question that framework. The whole purpose of the questions in the first place is to create a model for helping you be a better person so I think it's more important that they make sense in a practical way than it is that they hold up to intense philosophical scrutiny.

[@VaronPlateando]

well... as I'd see it, this is also where design thinking comes in, considering | contemplating abstract aesthetics of (fit of) metaphors.

[@teddydunn3513]

Lack of free will just means that holding people morally responsible is not really about criticizing the past actions but reshaping their cognitive disposition so that they don't commit those acts in the future. It's the difference between retribution and rehabilitation.

[@natebozeman4510]

Really enjoyed this conversation! I am a Christian who believes we have free will, believes we do have moral responsibility for our actions, and believes in a combination of divine command ethics and Kantian ethics, but this was very interesting to hear the differing opinions.

[@gearaddictclimber2524]

Would be interested to hear your take on their discussion of free will since you decided to just put ur views on for no particular reason. Surely it’s clear that nobody ever has the choice to act differently, since all of our actions are informed by our brains, which is a chemical phenomenon that is influenced by outside and internal factors. You ultimately don’t have a choice in the way you act because your actions are determined by your brain, which is a pure machine. To deny this would be to imply some sort of non-probable method by which we somehow aren’t determined which I’d be happy to see you attempt to prove. There was no point in you just laying out your philosophical beliefs other than to “stake your turf” so-to-speak.

[@natebozeman4510]

@@gearaddictclimber2524 You just did the same thing and are complaining that I did it too?

[@gearaddictclimber2524]

@@natebozeman4510 no I justified my beliefs instead of putting out there just for the sake of doing so

[@natebozeman4510]

@@gearaddictclimber2524 I was giving my views as a way of saying "I disagree with you, but I still enjoyed the conversation." I think this helps keep the conversations between theists and atheists cordial, unlike what's happening right now between you and I

[@gearaddictclimber2524]

@@natebozeman4510 The only reason you see it as non cordial is because you commented your views for no reason just to be represented in the pot and your views starkly contrast w the ones in the video. I’m simply astounded that you still hold to free will after the discussion so I’m merely challenging you to substantiate your claim

[@ionasmith1998]

1:33:40 oh my god that caught me SO off guard I laughed so hard. Reminds me of that Cole Sprouse interview where he’s asked what his favourite thing to receive by fans is and he says “CASH MONEY”

[@MrJamesdryable]

There is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so. - Shakespeare

[@christophercombs7561]

Good and bad are too nebulous of terms but thats just my opinion

[@KindanThe1st]

I would say thinking and feeling makes it so

[@chamicels]

I like that a lot, thanks!

[@joannware6228]

Tell that to Stalin and Mao's victims.

[@rectorsquid]

The humility at the beginning is awesome. I wish more people were humble and accepting of the weakness of their own intellect.

[@joannware6228]

The Cosmic Skeptic Alex's appeal & popularity is more about his charm than his ideas. He's more a performer than a philosopher.

[@E11or]

@@joannware6228i wouldnt agree with that

[@joannware6228]

@@E11or That was 10 months ago. Maybe I was wrong, but he is a very charming person. Right?

[@E11or]

@@joannware6228 yea i think he is charming thats why he good a lot of subs. Good ideas wont give you that

[@joannware6228]

@@E11or Okay. Thanks. What's "why he good a lot of subs" mean?

[@IdeasAboveStation]

@26:40 As a Physicist, this is generally not the attitude taken in Physics. It's a matter of 'resolution'. Newtonian Physics isn't just 'good enough', it's incredibly accurate and useful in almost all everyday situations. Only when looking at uniquely exotic circumstances, moving at some fraction of the speed of light or gravitatioanl effets of massive objects like stars, do we need to invoke Relativity to more fully explain phenomena. It isn't like Newton's wrong so now we must do all calculations via a relativistic lens. Following his previous argument about doing 'moral calculus' as an EMT with people dying, then you need a more efficient decision mechanism else people die while you add up the seriousness of their injuries. Similarly, you'd needlessly over complicate the motion of a snooker ball on a table if you decided to use relativitic equation to solve the motion of snooker balls. But maybe when you need to explain the perihelion of Mercury or gravitational waves, then relativity is definitely the right tool for the job. In that sense, morality probably shouldn't be viewed as an absolute immovable frame of decision making, but more exotic frames should be used when dealing with special circumstances. In every day circumstances, it's wrong to kill someone. But given the special case if the threat of utter annihilation of the entire human race depended on killing an innocent bystander, perhaps it's best to kill the bystander.

[@aaronbredon2948]

And this more efficient system for EMTs is called 'triage'. It involves separating the patents into groups - those who no action can save, those who need immediate action to save, and those for whom action can be delayed until later or where more thought can be put into treating. One must also consider authority and responsibility when discussing moral questions. Taking unilateral action means taking full responsibility for the results. As far as the doctor - the only moral action is to put it to the patient. Every person's moral position is different. When one is trading lives - killing one person to save X makes one a killer. Killing 10,000 to save 10,000X makes one a mass murderer/war criminal/terrorist/etc. There is a point where the scope makes it immoral. Not killing one person to save many does not make one responsible unless one is a law enforcement officer, military, or a bodyguard. And killing 10,000 to save many times that is immoral no matter what. When given the choice of 10,000 dying or 1 million, both choices make you a monster. Inaction is never immoral unless one already has authority/responsibility. Morality does not follow the rules of Boolean logic. If killing 1 person to save X is immoral, it does not follow that not killing the 1 person, and thus letting the X die is moral. In morality, it can be the case that X is immoral and NOT X is equally immoral. Or that X is moral and NOT X is equally moral.

[@SocietyOfTheLiftedLorax]

I read a ton of philosophy. Currently stuck on Camus. I appreciate these podcasts

[@drewpy14]

what do you think of his writing? big camus fan lol

[@devilscritic]

This is a great podcast and I’ve not seen it yet!

[@adrianchai6761]

I feel like the subject of ethics cannot be appreciated without taking a holistic approach. We don't live in a world of strict absolutes. Change the frame of the question/situation and the ethical solution shifts. We'd like to think that we are 'logical'. Reality is that alot of decision making is multifaceted. Emotions and social relationships matter. We can't say in hindsight what we should have done. Only that we chose the best decision we could have reached at the time of the crisis.

[@jsbrads1]

We don’t live in a world of strict absolutes? 😅

[@IvanSoregashi]

Getting into Harvard kinda weird discussion. 1) Nothing wrong with paying money for prior education, it's not fair is when tuition is only affordable to the rich. 2) Nothing is wrong with saying 'you are too stupid' for the university.

[@LineaDeus]

*Wow! Alex O'Connor knows nothing about Philosophy. I would never want Alex teaching children! Every single argument Alex pushed, was an Exception to the Rule, presented as the Rule, masquerading multiple axioms as singular axioms, bound by irrelevant suppositions, explicitly exempting relevant suppositions, creating a wholly Strawman outlier's to argue a conclusion to the meaninglessness of everything. He did this on every single argument and subject. That was the most spectacular and consistent immaculate demonstration of Unconscious Absolutist Nihilism... ...Masquerading as Philosophy. ...Or Professional Subversion.* He claimed you only need to prove one thing wrong about an axiom to prove it wrong, which is true. But never proved anything wrong, because every argument he gave, he offered false axioms as true axioms. That is not how you prove anything false, that is subverting truth by replacing it with falsehood, presenting it as fact. My jaw was in the concreate when he actually argued "For" the supposition of "A Right Not to be Killed" as a real thing excepted by others, that needs to be argued to prove morality is a delusion. ...There is no such thing, and never has been. His argument were predominantly founded on presenting and treating Objective realities as Subjective realities, and Treating Subjective realities as Objective realities. At no point has there been single individual's, "Every day", threatening to kill 10000 people unless you kill one innocent person. That is an extreme exception to the Rule. To use it as a Monolith foundation to present an argument to debate the morality on Human Rights, is lunacy.

[@Stuffingsalad]

Like Alex said in the video, you only need to disprove one element of something to show it’s false/not entirely consistent. Nor did he say that these things aren’t entirely consistent that they can’t have practical use, as per the Newtonian gravity example.

[@LineaDeus]

Alex did not prove or disprove anything. He applied assumptions that had no relevance's and left every direct and common relevance out, to the point of even making up axioms that don't exist, and presenting Objective axioms as Subjective axioms and Subjective Axioms as Objective axioms. That is not how you prove or disprove anything. That is how you present a lie, masquerading as the truth. Its called Professional Subversion.

[@Stuffingsalad]

@@LineaDeus The title of the video was ‘8 impossible thought experiments’. The whole point was not to ‘Poo poo’ all of ethics, but just to show that at some level, whether it be realistic or not, there’s some inconsistency. That’s it. And he isn’t wrong. There is no ‘perfect’ ethical system. But that doesn’t mean that they’re all ‘bad’.

[@LineaDeus]

@@Stuffingsalad I agree there are inconsistences with ethics, and a great many. But for Alex to argue a debate of inconsistences within ethics, by creating fake inconsistences, does not argue for the real ones. That once gain, it is subversion from the truth of the a real debate. No offence, but I don't think Alex realises he is actually doing that, as his void of conclusions consistently end in Nihilism. Everyone of his arguments on every concept and axiom, is an entirely over thinking process of a convoluted downward spiral into endless meaninglessness. That is how you move as far away from finding any answers to anything as possible. Which is why he has found no choice but to call it Impossible thought experiments. ...At every conceivable turn, He denies himself every avenue of possibility. That is Nihilism, not any general praxis of philosophy.

[@ithurtsbecauseitstrue]

@@LineaDeus you are very correct. How can a false dilemma effectively “disprove” an objective moral standard? Objective moral standards are not designed with any relevance towards false dilemmas. The flaw being discovered is the faultiness of the dilemma, not the moral standards. Yet Alex says no matter how false and how absurd it is, it disproves the objective moral claim. No. A false dilemma cannot disprove a true premise / claim / standard.

[@samuelmelton8353]

Regarding the idea that people who avoid risk deserve better healthcare: Wait until Alex hears of health insurance

[@markn866]

This conversation is fascinating in that I like to add on the exercise of taking the topics to see what contradictions I have in a moral lens vs. a legal lens.

[@JimmyMFP]

I would’ve said, as someone who thinks deeply like this, ethics is not about working out what is right or morally correct, albeit a stimulating thought experiment, ethics is in fact about working out the least wrong thing based on your subjective moral compass. There is a massive difference between individual ethical behaviour and collective ethical standards or expectations, based largely on one party’s pre-emptive - ironically - ethical assumptions.

[@haniamritdas4725]

This is a refreshing departure from the ubiquitous oppressive collectivism that enshrines the delusions of the majority as the standard of behavior. 🙏

[@davemillsap647]

The purpose of higher education institutions is not to parse out equity but to use standards of competence to educate individuals in subjects to prepare them for a functional role in society be that career or educator.

[@mikeuk2000]

For the first situation with the doctor: a good decision does not always lead to a good outcome so we shouldn't judge the measure of a decision by its outcome (or at least purely its outcome). The doctor should have chosen pill B based on good decision making but got lucky with pill A.

[@josiahferrell5022]

Indeed. Alex seems like he is twisting himself in a knot. It isn't a good idea to walk off of a 500 foot/meter cliff, even if there is a remote possibility that some event will happen that causes you to not die. Of course, if you do the only thing that seems reasonable and walk away from the cliff, you might get hit by a vehicle as soon as you are turning around, but that doesn't make it the unwise decision.

[@CPMax205]

Agreed, process > end results. The best ethical choice in examples where probabilities are involved is the make the best choices that has the highest expected valued in the long run.

[@matthewsocoollike]

couldn't I make a similar reverse argument? the best action would be the one that helps the patient the most. so before you choose pill A or B, you dont know what the good choice is. you can only decide based on what "probably" is the right choice. since pill A did help the patient, the doctor made the right choice.

[@josiahferrell5022]

@@matthewsocoollike No. That doesn't work. Given the parameters of the question, the only good choice is to not give the patient, what is essentially, POISON. If we start to add information to the question, then it can, possibly, change the answer. For example, statistics are only records of what has happened to others. In the literal sense, statistics don't matter to each individual decision. What matters are the specific facts at play in each circumstance. IF the doctor is considering giving the patient a medicine that, statistically, has a high chance of killing them (in agony), but has specific knowledge of a patient's mitigating biological features, then it is much more reasonable to consider giving it to them. As an example of this: The medicine the doctor wants to give them has killed %99.99 of the people it was given to by infecting their appendixes, but the patient has had theirs removed. This completely changes the reasonability of the choice. The problem is, adding this kind of information seems to be against the idea behind the question. The information that we can add, which seems to be in line with the question, is this: Even the doctor believes that the odds are %99.xx in favor of this person dying in agony. Think about that. A doctor, which has every reasonable expectation that a medicine they give to the patient is going to cause intense pain, followed by death at some unknown point afterward, is considering giving it to them anyway. All the while, sitting in the other refrigerator, is a medicine which has %99.xx chance to cure the patient and send them home happy. This is like shooting someone, at point-blank range, in the face, while saying "this might cure your seizures". The motivation of someone that does this can only be perceived as an intent to murder them, because the decision would be SO unreasonable otherwise. Does it mean that, occasionally, nature is going to bare its fangs at us and bite back? I really wish not, but it does. Sometimes, the right decision isn't going to work, but it remains the right decision because we only do the best we can with the information we have.

[@mikeuk2000]

@@matthewsocoollike The reverse argument of what I said would be 'a good decision always leads to a good outcome' which is not true. Getting lucky does not mean it was a good decision at the time, but it was a good outcome. There is a difference between good decision and good outcomes which is being confused here.

[@chrisjarmain]

Fantastic video. It does make you re think your own moral compass. 😮 The tumour idea is a touch mind-blowing. Loved it. 😊 😃

[@kennyehm2004]

Great dialogue. I’m a big fan of O’Connor and this is the first time I’ve came across this page. Yes you’ve gained a subscriber. 🤙🏼

[@joannware6228]

The Cosmic Skeptic Alex's appeal & popularity is more about his charm than his ideas. He's more a performer than a philosopher.

[@kennyehm2004]

@@joannware6228 Devout religious folks seem to think that. I think he’s received praise from some pretty intelligent individuals. Dawkins, Krauss, even Oppy.

[@joannware6228]

@@kennyehm2004 Do you put a high value on intelligence?

[@kennyehm2004]

@@joannware6228 Yes. I’m Curious to see where you’re going with this question.

[@joannware6228]

@@kennyehm2004 Well intelligence, like athletic ability, and many other traits are fixed at birth. An individual has nothing to do with acquiring them. You're either blessed or you're not. So it's how you use them that really matters. They can be used for good or for bad. So to base your judgement of someone only on his intelligence is not much of an endorsement and says little about the person. Also to put a high value on intelligence is an indication of skewed priorities.

[@idaloup6721]

Certainly the most interesting talk that you ever done here with Alex. Regarding the human nature and the question of free will and responsibility, I would say that the nature of mankind, meaning the essence, is predestined to be what it is regardless of upbringing because I do believe in the prebirth nature that is subconscious and it will always defeat any kind of moral codes

[@joannware6228]

I'm not okay. You're not okay.

[@sordidknifeparty]

My biggest problem with the utilitarian viewpoint, is answering the question of where we stopped looking at the consequences of a particular action. So for example, to answer the question of whether it's good to take heroin: well by buying it I'm breaking the law and encouraging Black Market activity, so it's bad, but then, after I purchased it and used it, I will feel enormous pleasure, quite possibly more pleasure than I've ever felt before, so overall it's good then. But afterward, I'll be addicted to it, I have to spend all my time and resources on obtaining more, so it's bad. I'm a pretty criminal guy in this scenario, and perhaps if I wasn't otherwise occupied with trying to obtain heroin I would have been out committing much more serious crimes, so it's good again. We could keep going back and forth like this forever, going a little further forward in time, adding a new consequence that is somehow greater than the ones before, and changing our mind as to its moral goodness or Badness. These infinite consequences being the case, I don't know how anyone ever decides how far ahead to look to decide whether an action will be good or bad on utilitarianism. Maybe someone can clarify for me.

[@kenakofer]

I'm a utilitarian (perhaps "rule" utilitarian or "probabilistic" utilitarian based on the vid). I'm highly conscious of the time/suffering/pleasure cost of analyzing possible consequences. When choosing a brand of peanut butter, I, like most people, don't sweat it too much. When deciding about a university education, most people will do a lot more analysis of consequences than they would for the peanut butter choice. So to answer your question from my perspective, there's always a "meta" analyzer running in my mind that can supervise the analysis and say "This is an important life choice, so do a deeper analysis", versus "This is just peanut butter and you're already running late, so just take a sensible default." Regarding making big decisions where you might lack data, I think Eliezer Yudkowsky said something about making a big pros and cons list, then throwing away your list and going with your intuition. If the calculating part of my brain can't convince the intuitive part of my brain, the intuitive part wins. So I guess my gut just has a utilitarian advisor. With your heroin example, I start with the default, or "prior" that taking heroin for the first time to have negative utility, for most people at most times. You do a good job of showing some counterexamples, but my prior is strong enough that I would need a lot of evidence to update me away from it.

[@joannware6228]

The function of ethics is not to minimize suffering & maximize pleasure. An emotion does not indicate to us right and wrong. We don't acquire a knowledge of right and wrong from experience. We are taught right & wrong mostly from our parents. Ethics is not a developing discipline like science. Ethical values are not relative. They are fixed. Beginning with this assumption you will avoid dilemmas as you describe.

[@joannware6228]

I'm not okay. You're not okay.

[@etlillebarn4711]

There is a diference between good and right. Suffering and wrong. If one can differ between them this conversation becomes something totally different.

[@mikeprata2976]

Phenomenal point.

[@Spideysenses67]

Interesting to hear that Alex is an emotivist. I'd like to hear his answer to the Frege-Geach problem. To me it seems pretty straightforward that when we make moral statements such as "stealing is wrong" we are asserting that stealing has the property of wrongness the same way that the statement "the bus is red" is an assertion that the bus has the property of redness. The big problem for emotivism is how we can make sense of sentences like "is stealing wrong?", or "if stealing is wrong, then getting Peter to steal is wrong". No emotion is actually being expressed in these sentences, and so it seems to me that the best way to construe them is to take them at face value, that here the word "wrong" is in fact referring to some actual or hypothetical property existing in the actual world.

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

Right and wrong are RELATIVE. 😉

[@phulcq6716]

It sounds like his rationale is that the baseline for assigning the property of wrongness in the first place is not objective and purely emotional. I suspect he's making the mistake that many do in thinking that this is particular to ethics and that other subjects are immune to this - for example we don't have to rely on our emotions in mathematical proofs. We do though, because at its foundation we still rely on things like "self-contradiction is intolerable", which itself can't be proved. Many people who succeed in recognising this make a different mistake and decide that because something is not "provable" or "empirically verifiable" it must be arbitrary, which also need not be the case.

[@realMaverickBuckley]

Yup. 'Thou shalt not kill' The Military - We'll hang you if you refuse to kill.

[@SquishypuffDave]

I'm trying to understand this Frege-Geach argument. Are they claiming that because people describe morals with cognitivist language, cognitivism is therefore true? Surely you could do this with any emotive statement. 1. You suck. 2. If you suck, then everything you do sucks. Therefore, everything you do sucks. The stealing example can also be easily interpreted as a shorthand for an expression of preference. 1. Stealing is something I object to. 2. If stealing is something I object to, then getting Peter to steal is also something I object to. Therefore, getting Peter to steal is something I object to. Let me know if I've misunderstood though.

[@Spideysenses67]

@@SquishypuffDave Basically the Frege-Geach argument holds that because when we use moral language we do so in a cognitivist way, this would make it highly implausible that noncognitivism is true. In other words in order for noncognitivism to be true then all of our regular cognitivist moral language would be guilty of an error. The syllogisms you described are examples of cognitivist language, not noncognitivist. I'll explain. Cognitivism holds that the sentence "stealing is morally wrong" is propositional, meaning that it purports to describe some state of affairs which in this case is that the act of stealing has the property of moral wrongness. On the other hand noncognitivism holds that "stealing is morally wrong" is nonpropositional, meaning that it does not purport to be about or refer to or describe any state of affairs. Instead, the noncognitivist holds that "stealing is wrong" is simply an expression of disgust towards stealing. What's crucial to understand here is that expressing disgust is a very different linguistic activity to saying "I am disgusted". The former is an expression and hence nonpropositional and noncognitivist in nature, whereas the latter is a description of your expression and therefore propositional and cognitivist in nature. Again let's look at the following syllogism and see how both views would interpret the sentences involved. 1./ Stealing is wrong. 2./ If stealing is wrong then getting Peter to steal is wrong. 3./ Therefore, getting Peter to steal is wrong. The way noncognitivism construes the first sentence is not as a description of one's disgust as you might have thought, but rather noncognitivism construes it simply just as an expression of disgust. Now this doesn't appear to pose too much of a problem for noncognitivism, the difficulty is when the theory tries to interpret the second sentence, as the second sentence is not expressing anything at all due to the "if" conditional. And so the noncognitivist much hold that the two appearances of "wrong" must mean totally different things as the first instance is an expression and the second isn't. This would render the argument invalid due to the fallacy of equivocation. The problem is that we can make sense of the argument as being perfectly valid, which undermines noncognitivism's plausibility as a true theory of what we are doing when we use moral language.

[@pace1195]

My biggest problem with this episode is the simplification of such complex issues. Take the case of the smoker vs the non-smoker with lung cancer. Getting rid of the value of equal protection of all citizens in the US, there are other possibilities for this situation. Let’s say you have the two cancer patients and two treatments. One is the standard treatment for lung cancer, but it is hard to acquire and relatively expensive. You also have a new treatment a company is looking to try out which may bring down the cost of cancer treatments if it works. I think most people would say it is fair if the smoker is allowed to only choose the experimental treatment or nothing due to the foreknowledge of a much greater risk of getting lung cancer while smoking for many years. That way, the non-smoker gets the rationed treatment as a consequence of bad luck. That seems most fair, but it is not how human nature works. In the end, rationing always comes down to currency. That may or may not be monetary. Famous and powerful people get their children into great schools by reputation, network, past accomplishments or credentials, and even writing big, fat checks. If the smoker has connections, then the non-smoker may be out of luck. If the tv celebrity has connections, your kid may have to attend the local state school instead of getting a scholarship to the private school. The lucky sperm club is a fact of life. Unfortunately, we can’t make all of society equally fair. Life’s hard, get a helmet!

[@tnmygrwl]

I don't think simplification is a problem as long as it logically follows to a fundamental simpler form. They certainly avoided discussing a lot of the simplification steps.

[@hunterchristian8372]

Imagine how amazing it would be if we had some sort of way to accurately measure a person's agency at the time they committed a crime.

[@2Hot2]

Very entertaining and thought-provoking. I just realized that the criteria of "minimizing suffering" and "maximizing pleasure" are nowhere close to synonymous in reference to fundamental questions like "Should I have kids?" (no, to minimize suffering, or yes, to maximize potential pleasure) or "Should I commit painless suicide?" (yes, to minimize suffering, or no, to maximize potential pleasure).

[@robpalwrites]

I've never thought of ethics in terms of maximising pleasure or minimising suffering. In terms of the question about the doctor choosing between two pills, my ethics would put the question to the patient, informing them of all the details between the two pills, as they would naturally have a greater idea of what level of risk they want to take. It's not up to me to impose my own risk profile onto others.

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

CONGRATULATIONS! You are wiser than Mr. O'Connor. 😛

[@robpalwrites]

@@ReverendDr.Thomas It's not a competition, it's just my personal opinion. If other people prefer a different opinion then they're quite within their rights to do so.

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

@@robpalwrites Well, we all have our own particular OPINIONS, but ultimately, there exists objective truth, which is not subject to our misconceptions and misunderstandings. One who has transcended mundane relative truth is said to be an ENLIGHTENED soul. 😇

[@robpalwrites]

@@ReverendDr.Thomas All that being said, regarding ethics, it's a very personal thing, so objetive truth doesn't hold value. It's relative and subjective all the way. That's why, in this case, opinions actually matter. I'm not sure if we're just talking passed each other, so I think it's best if we leave it here. Have a good day.

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

@@robpalwrites That is rather PRESUMPTUOUS of you, wouldn’t you agree, Slave? Presumption is evil, because when one is PRESUMPTUOUS, one makes a judgement about a matter, despite having insufficient facts to support one’s position.

[@iamtheiconoclast3]

Thanks to the first 20 minutes of this podcast, I know that I don't need to go to university and study philosophy, because the entire conversation around utilitarianism takes places in a fictitious universe in which time and causality do not exist. In reality, of course, it is impossible to know what the consequences of our actions will be, so there is no way to determine what will minimize suffering and maximize pleasure.

[@simonjones4941]

An incredible discussion. With all of the utopian ideas being thrown around, this podcast really puts into perspective how futile it is to ever reach *true* equality.

[@jeupater1429]

Nature abhors equality, All naturalists know this

[@sixtysecondphilosopher]

We persist on the back of structural processes. Embodiment of the structure is the optimal way for all people because it is what we are. Sticking to the optimal path is optimal. Respect for everyone on the path is optional. Ethics is the mind in systematic flow with what is. It is easy pull combinational paradoxes out of the bag and tie the structure up in knots but they don’t change the fact of what is in flow. And if we have to deal with the odd conundrum from time to time, those invested in the variables can work it out best they can among themselves.

[@nrght]

Chris, I think you’d love having on Yaron Brook (a friend of Michael Malice) and asking similar questions. He would provide an interesting (and valuable) polar opposite perspective on these topics. Either way, I love what you’re doing, keep it up!

[@scootaymildo1070]

God, I haven't thought about that guy in a long time. Pure bell-end that one.

[@rationalmuscle]

I may have a better way to view this: the consistent actions that foremost minimize unnecessary suffering and those that maximize the potential for human flourishing. "Consistent actions" would not allow one to "consistently" murder 1 to save 10, as "murder" cannot be a consistent action that minimizes unnecessary suffering, but still allow an exception that's not carried out consistently. It's the consistency of actions that, when viewed in the aggregate, create the most or least suffering, as well as the greatest or lesser degree of flourishing. Also, the emphasis is on minimizing suffering, as this is reflective of the values of most humans, therefore you look first to suffering, not the gain of pleasure. This also escapes the need to claim objective truth. It's not that objectively "true" that murder is wrong - it's that it's not a consistent action one could take and expect minimal suffering. At the heart of this is the idea that actual flourishing (not just pleasure) and minimal suffering only comes from "consistent" actions. The outliers are by definition not consistent. This also escapes the concept of rights being immutable.

[@sordidknifeparty]

As regards to the difficulties of Performing hedonic calculus in the moment, I think doing that is much like training to become an elite level athlete. When the game is actually on, you will almost certainly not have enough time to think about what you going to do and how you're going to do it, because if you do the moment will have already passed. Instead they rely on muscle memory, the analogy of which would be moral memory. We do our best to train ourselves, preparing ourselves for whatever situations we could imagine and doing the calculus done when we have the time in the hopes that if we ever find ourselves in a real-life Position where we'll have to make that sort of decision, our moral memory will take over and we'll make the right choice without having to think.

[@joannware6228]

It's an amazing phenomena. Atheists egos are so enormous they believe they can reinvent the universe

[@limbothytimothy]

​@@joannware6228 lol what this isn't even remotely true

[@sordidknifeparty]

​@@joannware6228 theist egos are so big they feel: first is that the entire universe is literally Made for them; seconds that they think they understand that Universe well enough to declare what is and isn't the words of an all-powerful Creator God as if their instincts and intuitions on morality Justified belief of certain knowledge. Or perhaps I should just say: don't point out the sliver in your brother's eye, when there is a plank in your own

[@joannware6228]

@@sordidknifeparty I just calls em like I sees em. That was year ago but it's still true. I stand by it. Your remarks are contradictory.

[@sordidknifeparty]

​@@joannware6228please, point out precisely where I contradict myself. I'll wait.

[@GlorifiedGremlin]

The problem with asking the question of if its ethical to harm few to bring pleasure to many, is the initial conflation of minimizing harm and maximizing pleasure as synonymous. It's simply not. I could gather up a group of stray cats and place them in a room where they have all the food and water they need, padding to keep them safe, medical treatments for injuries, etc. That's minimizing suffering. But without enrichment, catnip, mates, I'm not maximizing their pleasure. Bringing a negative number to zero is not the same as bringing a positive number to zero. In fact they're the antithesis of one another. One requires addition, the other requires subtraction. The foundation of the argument is disingenuous to begin with.

[@anewagora]

I've learned that a person's understanding of morality and ethics as a whole, however they navigate it, is dramatically improved if they understand the innate human desire for autonomy. This is emergent and explains our instincts for boundaries, symbiosis, mutual respect, trust. "Human rights" as people describe it almost always come back to autonomy- each of us has the space to make choices over our own lives.

[@haniamritdas4725]

🙏🙏🙏

[@voicemonkey3886]

What would you think of someone who understands the desire for autonomy but shirks morals because morals restrict certain choices?

[@anewagora]

@@voicemonkey3886 Confusing, I'd want to ask them questions to better understand, because it would be so unusual to meet someone who is consciously pro-autonomy yet rejects morality in general. That's pretty wild. Every person I've known that is consciously pro-autonomy is morally motivated- it's really a personality type. Myself included. The only person I can imagine from your description is someone who is hedonistic and missing half the definition of autonomy. A hedonist mistakes pleasure as purpose, and the implication carried with that is they should avoid pain. It's a very limited, low-level philosophy of meaning that usually happens unconsciously. It always leads people to leave behind hedonism, because of tolerance. You need stronger doses of pleasure, and become hyper-sensitive to pain, until there is nothing but numb and pain left. Your own desire for pleasure itself, leads you to leave hedonism for a new philosophy of meaning (usually this is an upward evolution). The other part, likely, is they recognize the freedom part of autonomy but are blind to the responsibility part. People like this (also often hedonists) likely grew up with parents who treated punishment as responsibility. Such parents will bully their kids with these punishments and be convinced it's the same thing as their kids developing responsibility. When the two are radically different concepts. Those kids grow up to treat responsibility as a punishment, because they've been propagandized. Their instincts want them to reclaim their own autonomy that was disrespected in childhood, but their attempt at this ironically REJECTS their autonomy. Healing this means embracing responsibility and recognizing it belongs to you, nobody else. It is MY Response Ability. It is the same thing as freedom, the other side of the coin. If a person is hedonistic and rejects responsibility because they are unconscious and propagandized, they won't be motivated to balance their autonomy with others' or respect others' autonomy the same as their own. They have a lot of struggle and growth to go through to reach a deeper level of understanding and personal evolution.

[@mitchellwelch9135]

13:17 fair view but the direction is to name it. Define it.

[@DM_Curtis]

This is why we must embrace virtue ethics. Virtues are heuristics, which is how the brain actually works. Post-Kantian ethics deluded people into thinking there can be a perfect right answer to every ethical problem, but Kurt Godel proved, inadvertently, this to be impossible, but that doesn't mean ethics don't exist.

[@Tohlemiach]

I'm not very well read on European philosophy, but I came to the same conclusion some time ago all the same. It's why I respect religion a lot more nowadays even if I still find I lack the ability to embrace it once again myself. I appreciate that there is in some sense a necessity to say "here's the starting point, I accept A, B, and C as true, and you're not convincing me otherwise." Who's to say which axioms are unacceptable? At the end of the day, you do have to just sit down and accept that you simply DO have axioms. Whether or not you chose them or merely inherited them from your parents, you all know there are some things deep down that you just accept at face value. My personal philosophy is that, while yes, everyone has a right to their heuristic virtues, I don't have to agree with anyone else's, as I have the same right. We WILL have conflicts when some groups come into contact with groups of incompatible values, and we will have to solve those problems, but at the very least we should recognize that everyone at least has the RIGHT to formulate a world-view based on axioms, regardless of what they are. You shouldn't feel ashamed of yours, you shouldn't have to justify them rationally just to be allowed to have them, but you also shouldn't give them up to someone else when they make the same claim. That's not a method for solving problems, it's just an attitude about the way the world is.

[@DM_Curtis]

@@Tohlemiach I recommend Aristotle and, for the religious, Aquinas. However, theirs aren't the only formulations possible, but the best to start with.

[@kevinpulliam3661]

@@DM_CurtisAquinas and classical theism is the easy answer here and was the answer for all of Europe for 1000s of years until Modernity

[@davefordham14]

I myself don't see the dilemma of attributing the origins of what is "good" and what is not to a higher being. There are occasions that makes the choice of doing one thing or the other difficult but those are few and far in between. Life is not, and as far as I can see, was never meant to be lived according to strict rules that had to be applied in every situation, by every person, every time. This is why we have free will. To decide, sometimes differently, given a similar situation if that is what our heart or mind dictated at the time. And Alex is quite right to point out that sometimes it is an inward feeling of right or wrong that dictates our action. We do not have an hour long discussion about a thing before we decide to go right or left. If you do that, then yes, we will run into trouble. We will find that we cannot actually answer every question in the form of a proposition that is true or false. The vast majority of the time, you simply KNOW what the right answer is and that is what you decide. Whether that "knowing" comes from the numinous or some other source - that can be debated but wherever it comes from, it is there, even among people who are completely ignorant of the books and thoughts handed down to us by the great philosophers of the past. They just know.

[@ElroyMunson]

Finally... Someone other than myself is discussing culpability concerning physiology and/or abusive nurturing.

[@joannware6228]

I'm not okay. You're not okay.

[@scotthullinger4684]

Only philosophy is hard. But ethics are easy. Ethics are based on something everybody knows called good and evil. The problem with philosophy is that it is often used to justify evil. Noble words very often accomplish next to nothing. In many cases, the evil exists in the very clear failure to do good. Allowing for evil, and doing nothing about it, is the worst kind of evil.

[@garydaly]

Great discussion. I do agree brain structure, background, experience, genetics plays into the totality of 'free' will (which I think should be framed as a type of robotic 'programming', yet life is hardly ever so clearly cut. How many actual tumours have caused crimes. The architecture of the brain does of course play a huge role in decision making. I don't know where free will even begins, perhaps in a hundred years scientists will map the brain and discover that our brains work independently of choice, then every crime, invention, culture, religion could be explained away. However, until then there is no way of knowing. I live with the idea that free will exists but I don't think it exists. In my case I've made a complete mess of my life, poor choices, poor decisions, impulsive, hedonistic and living in the moment for mostly selfish reasons. I had a horrible childhood, father committed suicide, mother an alcoholic, married a nan who physically abused me and my mother, I was afraid of him every single day. He was a pig, a bully and how do I reconcile my poor life outcomes living a painfully neglected childhood. Where did my 'laziness', my lack of ambition, lack of drive, enjoyment for impulsive hedonistic pleasures. I'm 56 years old and when I say i have poor life outcomes I did get married (though divorced as I was horribly suited to marriage). I became a father late in life (41 years) and even though I was a terrible husband and I'm not in anyway a superb father, but I work hard to be the best loving father I can. I think my limited success as a dad is the greatest success I've ever experienced. How much has my BRAIN changed over the decades? Who am I if not for my failures in life that has led me to be living on a war pension, no savings, no property, no assets, single and isolated. Would I have been a better man if my father hadn't killed himself, that my mother didn't drink and I wasn't physically beaten and neglected throughout my childhood. Also this is not a 'woe is me' I am simply trying too communicate that my brain and mind were not created by a 100# FREE WILL modem. How could I have improved my life outcomes that essentially were choices out of free will! Unsure.

[@daedricdragon5976]

Hey man. Thank you for sharing some parts of your life here; it made me sad to read through it but I also think that these are real-world examples of how one can end up in a place in life where, upon looking back, one can see they did not have much of a choice in bringing about many of the outcomes with which they now have to live. It is amazing (in a bad way) and, frankly, quite cruel to me how some people are so fixated on the idea of "control", as if we are all total masters of our fates. How short-sighted and arrogant of an idea that is! Thank you again. I wish you a better, fairer and more prosperous future. The pain of yesterday has indeed been hard but I hope in tomorrow there lie great things for you :)

[@JacobGrim]

Here's my two cents: You have a choice of ypur values and whether ypu pursue them, and you have the ability to gain knowledge and experience to expand your ability to exercise your free will. The more power you give to your life with your beliefs and values and actions, the less power you have over it.

[@rorybessell8280]

Scientists have already made multiple discoveries indicating the lack of free will and the lack of the "self"

[@psych0-shorts]

People often fail to recognize that lack of free will does not imply that because of a circumstance that we often see have an effect, that it will always have that effect. For example your terrible circumstances and experiences often lead people to terrible outcomes, wereas it didn’t to you. And that’s because circumstances for everyone differ, even if slightly. A slight nudge in input may cause the output (your future) to drastically change, even in ways that do not seem obvious; think butterfly effect. The way I see it is that although I believe we don’t have free will, the fact that we feel like we do should be enough for us to live as if we do. Seeing life through that lens as well as also being able to zoom out with the (non-free will) perspective is quite freeing, helps you view the world and not demonize it.

[@diabl2master]

I'm a professional poker player. The answer to the first question is a resounding NO. It all has to do with _available information_ - everything we do is uncertain. We have to act upon the information available to us, or seek more information to clarify our decisions. Probabilities are an expression of that available information. In the thought experiment, 1 in 1000 people just happen to be the sort of person to respond well to pill A. We assume in the experiment that we cannot do anything to figure out if the patient is such a person. We act based on what we know.

[@Thomasfboyle]

14:00 Morality may be intertwined with the emotional category, because the emotions (to various degrees of rationality or certitude) point us towards what is good. But “if it feels good then it is good” seems like an obviously flawed basis for ethics.

[@gearaddictclimber2524]

What a baseless claim. What makes you say emotions point us towards good? Emotions lead us to covet other people’s spouses, hate people, etc. Emotions usually point us AWAY from the good because they cause us to act selfishly for our own gain exclusively. Infusing morality with emotions is just a naturalistic fallacy; the idea that because our emotions are natural, they just necessarily BE good. It’s simply baseless and based on an assumption that our emotions are here to help us. It’s hopefully apparent that so often our emotions hurt us in the long run (or short run!), causing us to harm our well-being when we thought we were helping ourselves!

[@Thomasfboyle]

@@gearaddictclimber2524 Do people seek negative emotions or positive ones? My qualifying parenthetical makes my point still based. Jealousy, though disordered, reveals that their is good in the opposite direction. Mostly I was just tampering down the guest’s claims that all morality is reducible to emotional causes.

[@AliHammadArtist]

There are more chances of facing the bad consequences of bad actions than facing the good consequences of bad actions. Treating others according to individual rights is better than treating others the way you want to be treated. “Stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities.” Terry Josephson "Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life." ~ Aristophanes

[@haniamritdas4725]

You can inflict pain objectively on someone but you cannot inflict suffering, in my opinion. Suffering is self-pity. If you do not feel sorry for yourself, then you can experience pain without suffering from the experience. That is largely what makes us capable of enduring pain in the first place. If we endure, only then can deeper meaning than pain and pleasure emerge in our experience. If you are not addicted to pointless pleasure nor averse to useful pain, then you are a human being. Until then it is an animal life.

[@socceroos123]

I've heard Alex speak about ethics being expressions of emotion before and I have to say that it falls woefully short under scrutiny to me.

[@Zen56103]

There were issues raised in this episode which weren't the paradox that he makes them out to be. For example, in the college example, he says that picking people by intelligence to go to college is just as arbitrary as picking people with money. The problem with that is that universities are more effective at educating smart people than dumb people. Saying that it's just as arbitrary and unfair is like complaining that the "gifted and talented program" at your high school is unfair because it picks smart people rather than dumb people. The thing is: higher education is MOST effectively utilized by smart people. If you sent someone to Harvard who had an IQ of 70, they're not going to get much value out of it. You know what *would* be arbitrary? If you picked smart people to go first in a line at an amusement park, or decided that *only* smart people can ride the rides at amusement parks. There's no reason why "intelligence" should go first in that situation. The situation is very different with universities. Additionally, with universities, we give a certain level of respect to the intellectual achievement of people who have those educations. When people get into, say, Harvard we think "wow! that person must be very smart" and give them a level of respect. But if we find out they only made it to Harvard because their daddy paid $10 million to the university, we feel betrayed and mislead. We feel lied to about that person's intelligence and that any respect we gave them was stolen. That's also part of the reason we feel betrayed when a person gets into a prestigious university based on money. Another "conundrum" in the episode involved picking the balance of pain and pleasure (example: giving a certain amount of pain to give them a certain amount of pleasure). One of the problems with this setup is that he's assuming they can be easily converted into each other. But, economic markets show that things aren't necessarily convertible like that. For example, let's say that your car breaks down and you need oil, and you discover a farm but the owners aren't home. You find two gallons of oil on this farm, but you don't want to steal it. You decide that you'll take the oil but leave something of equal value in return. You decide that ten gallons of water are worth two gallons of oil, so you decide to leave that. The problem here is that you *don't* know that ten gallons of water are worth two gallons of oil to the farm's owner. Depending on the market and the farm owner's situation, they might value them completely differently. The farmer might have a million gallons of water already, and does not value water at all. That's why you would need to get the consent of the farms owner. They are not convertible via some known formula because everyone's situation and desires are different. By the same token, that's also why you can't convert X units of pain is equivalent to Y units of pleasure. They are not convertible like that. You need consent in moral dilemmas for the same reason that you need consent in barter situations. My biggest problem with these philosophical questions is that the philosopher is very often committing intellectual slight-of-hand without realizing it. They're like a magician who doesn't realize that they're performing a trick, so they are fooling themselves and everyone else. Much of the discussion around a philosophical issue is setting up the reader to be mislead into framing the issue a certain way. It's like taking a photograph with forced perspective, and then being confused by the picture and coming to the wrong conclusion.

[@roxee57]

I didn’t I read your whole reply, just the first section on universities. I disagreed too, but for different reasons. I find your counter missed the mark because Alex wasn’t arguing a rich parent paying for a place for their kid, he was arguing kids of rich parents get resources, environments and time to maximise their ability to achieve whatever merit level is achievable for their genetic inheritance.

[@garethevans3600]

At that last numinous part of the conversation maybe you could assume the following: God is good - therefor he would never tell you to do anything bad, therefore anything he tells you to do will always be good. Therefor he would never tell you to murder, etc and so therefore if you are a good person then his ethics would perfectly align with your own feeling about what was good.... Then you don't have to worry your little head about ethics - just do as youre told. Of course that would assume you have never read any religious texts.

[@uncas19typhoon]

The avoidance of suffering is not the same as the maximization of pleasure , as Alex presents it. I don’t think We have to evaluate these ideas thru binary lenses.

[@Uppernorwood976]

Isn’t more pleasure another way of saying less suffering? You seem to imply there is a ‘neutral’ state where people are neither suffering nor experiencing pleasure. I would say it’s more a continuum.

[@uncas19typhoon]

@@Uppernorwood976 I agree with you about it being a continuum, but "it" being so does not negate a middle ground, or an equilibrium. The concept of equanimity applies here, I believe. The moment of equanimity is what allows for all possibilities. What follows is either in a direction toward either pleasure or suffering. there is a difference, for example, between offering a child an sweet, and taking away a childs sweet , and again, never offering the sweet to begin with. There is no requirement that the child must be suffering before the offer is made. We can act in a way that promotes some kind of suffering, or in a way the promotes pleasure, or in away that does neither. I don't know if that makes sense to others, but it seems to work in my mind. Peace.

[@jakecostanza802]

@@uncas19typhoon peace.

[@CuriosityGuy]

Just love you both together always

[@joannware6228]

Can you solve this simple math problem? A good mathematician can solve it immediately. Most atheists will not believe the answer just like they don't believe God exists and probably for the same reasons, pride and lack of imagination. Here's the problem: We have a basketball. We stretch a rope or string around the circumference of the basketball so that the length of the rope is the length of the circumference. We then increase the length of the rope by d amount so that when we make a circle with the rope around the ball the distance from the surface of the basketball to rope is 1 ft. Then assuming the earth to be a sphere we stretch the rope around the earth's circumference 25,000 miles like we did with the basketball. Then like with the basketball we increase the length of the earth's circumference by the same d amount. Question : What is the length of distance from the surface of the earth to the rope?

[@reymariee]

at about 20:00 mins in, reminds me of something my ex used to always tell me lol. "everything we do is either to avoid pain, or to gain pleasure" this always helped me navigate peoples true intentions and see things from their perspective when i didnt initially understand their motivation on the point of antinatalism being immoral, i think the most " immoral " aspect of it truly comes down to the gambling aspect of it. for example, if you have diseases that are hereditary, than to gamble your offsprings wellbeing in itself is not moral , no matter the outcome. its much like if i were to bet someones life on something and win, maybe the outcome wasnt disastrous, but the act of betting on their life was "wrong" still.

[@kittuojha]

What if hereditary illnesses run in the family. There skip some generations but pop up here and there. Let's say you are fine but you know that your family has some heritable illnesses running in its bloodline. Will having kids also be a gamble then. In my experience, most families have some individual cases of severe mental illnesses or other hereditary disorders. The severity and likelihood should be factored in while making the gamble, because every kid is a gamble actually.

[@reymariee]

@@kittuojha i agree that every kid is a gamble but i would say if your family has medical history of a certain illness then you are taking an even bigger risk that your child will inherit that. which is a gamble in my opinion since there is no definite outcome, until science gets us there.

[@loayzc10]

I have a thought on merit for college. The reason it's unfair for someone, presumably under qualified, to buy their way into university, is because we want intelligent people to be successful. In the same way that we want the brave and strong in the military. Why would we want cowards and weaklings in charge of defending us? Why would we want dummies engineering our infrastructure, or in charge of our finances? We want people with certain talents and abilities to pursue careers that align with those. It's not about "fairness" it's about getting the right people for the job.

[@OdditiesandRarities]

cosmic sceptic is a how to guide on how to take yourself too seriously.

[@davidevans1723]

How does affecting impulse control make you attracted to anything? I feel like there were deeper darker things than impulse control inhibition at play here

[@AngelEpinoia]

Would I kill an innocent person to stop a bunch of nukes. If I got to talk to the person and explain what I’m doing, than if they agreed, I’d do it. But only if they agreed. the blood of the whole world is not on my hands still, I didn’t push the nuke button. Yes I could have stopped it but it wasn’t my time, the price was not worth it. Maybe someone else in a better position can stop the nukes with out murdering.

[@estellechan8811]

I thought that the question is open to interpretation - 'an innocent person' could mean a specific innocent person or any innocent person. My answer when I first heard the question was to pick myself as the innocent person to delete for if I were to be forced into a position to kill an innocent person, it would kill me psychologically, kill my soul anyway and I would not be able to live with myself. So the more expedient approach would be self-sacrifice. But I like your consent-based approach, self-deletion would most likely not be necessary - of all the billions of people on earth there are many terminally ill, very old or suicidal people who would be a willing volunteer for the role, and maybe even many who aren't any of the above who would also volunteer to go down in history as the saviour of all life and humanity.

[@JT-np1op]

Ethics is not about pleasure or comfort. Its about minimizing unnecessary/wanton destruction.

[@isaacorellana1754]

These examples are not even close to impossible. Humanity has had answers to these questions for a long time.

[@stefan-ns7dw]

🥳

[@lloydgush]

1: First dilema is literally an incomplete problem, define harming. One, very easy solution is "you can never gain utility through theft" and even if utility is defined subjectively/contextually (as it should) you can never distribute greater utility than what you stole, at the very least on the expected value. Now, if you are talking about war, well, context matters as well and it's an incomplete problem as well. One can simplify this problem by making it a hostage situation, you can even do it with lines on maps later. One person is covered in babies, shooting an immense number of innocents, you have the sniper rifle, and say it will keep doing it until estonia is nuked. Do you take the shot? Do you ask how fast is he going? Do you take his aim into consideration? 2. "impulse control" that's a wrong reading of responsibility, we hold as immoral those who we have to hold responsible "or else". One good counter to that is schizophrenic sadistic murderers. You either hold them responsible or there's consequences. We wouldn't ever call an animal (think a dolphin) a victim because they don't have impulse control due to natural causes. But we do hold animals as immoral all the time "bad dog!". 3. I don't think legacy admission (not backhand deals) are immoral, teachers gotta eat and universities have bills to pay. But it has to be open so we know how to evaluate the actual prestige of an institution. If you are really wealthy waste a bunch of money, congrats, you just donated a bunch of money to someone who likely will spend more wisely than you. (actually, likely a bunch of people) 4. That's not how medical ethics work. In medicine you treat who you likely can treat better and it's likely to recover, that's the priority, it has to work. It's like "should we prioritize very favorable loans to those who will be able to pay it, or to those who won't and can't get loans because of it?" At the very least what you do should work and that tends to be the most important thing. 5. Talking about goodness and it's source is pointless from an atheistic standpoint. Goodness is it's own source and can be literally empirically accessed through experience. Be an hedonist and you'll find that pleasure isn't goodness. The whole point of life is figuring out what it means and doing it. I would say "good is what ever tends to reinforce itself through time but never becomes absolute."

[@jordanjmdjmd74]

Thank god I can make sound, logical decisions in an instant. It sounds very draining ro think in circles like this

[@onethree123d]

For the first question it's simply because humanity isn't one person. We all start our human experience from scratch. For the murder bit, to me, it boils down to not being a hypocrite. "do unto others as you would have them do to you". Do I want to be murdered? How would that make me feel? How would that make others around me feel? How would a world where people can do that be like? The feeling is used to explore the experience but what tells me it's right or wrong is the "consequence" of it. Which can be tangible like people murdered or feeling like how terrifying it is to lose something as precious that if you lose it you lose it for good like *a life*. So bad consequences are bad things to do, good consequences are good things to do. Neutral is neutral. So I don't really agree with that idea that it's just a feeling. I just think a lot of people have a hard time understanding their emotional experiences and so can't articulate it. Doesn't mean there isn't something behind it. No feeling or anything is simply born out of nothing. When it comes to morality, I can tell something is good or bad based on this but that doesn't mean I'd always follow it. I agree with that. Which is imo because of our emotions, sometimes it's *better* for us to be hypocritical sometimes not being so *seemingly* harms us etc. That's what makes us humans and not gods. The issue for me comes when people actively try to mislead and paint the good as bad or vise versa just for their sake. Which makes them go from being just a human to be being an extremely awful and harmful one. I used to watch Cosmic skeptic years ago and this was really nice to come across on my feed. I haven't finished it though but I'll get to it later. Thank you for sharing.

[@-haclong2366]

Christ should interact more with the Cosmic Skeptic in the next interview,this felt like an augmented monologue. I want to see a dialogue.

[@MinosML]

Chris needs to learn more first in order to have these conversations, tbf. I'm not even being condescending as I'd probably be as silent as him throughout the podcast but if you really want to have these meaningful and difficult discussions about profound subjects you first need to have a base understanding of the relevant literature so far, imo. Alex excels at that too

[@L.I.T.H.I.U.M]

The more I think about morality the more irrational it appears to me.

[@kylemckinney_22]

You have an alternative?

[@L.I.T.H.I.U.M]

@@kylemckinney_22 The fact that moral choice won't always be the rational choice leaves no motivation for fair play. Plus, the negative feeling after choosing the rational but immoral choice could be easily overcome. Nietzsche's prediction.

[@JackTheMimic]

@@L.I.T.H.I.U.M Deontology is the only Logically consistent position. As well as discarding notions of fairness and what one deserves as irrational positions to hold.

[@L.I.T.H.I.U.M]

@@JackTheMimic I don't understand how deontology would work if consequences _are_ the reason the obligations came into being in the first place. It worked so little that the obligations had to be persuaded through God. And it goes against how humans operate. I'm ignorant about how it may work, my friend once argued for it but I chopped his arguments into pieces with no thinking beforehand. Haven't looked it up since. Maybe you can persuade me to.

[@anewagora]

Yes, the mind is going to do that. Go out in the world and get physical, social experiences here and now. Focus on that experience and shared presence. If you get lost in your mind, it will get lost in abstract concepts and value only itself over real life.

[@khattiseitap3367]

The most important lesson I learn from the discussion of philosophers is to keep as low a profile as possible around philosophers.

[@Luca-xh7ng]

Putting in jail a man for crimes he didn’t commit to try avoiding the town getting burned by rioters… sounds familiar

[@PhantomGreyfire]

Absolutely amazing. 🚫🍞

[@thel1355]

This man is very smart and profoundly wrong about everything.

[@brixan...]

There are two men here... Idk which one you're referring to

[@thel1355]

@@brixan... The other one.

[@brixan...]

@@thel1355 Oh

[@joannware6228]

@@brixan... Must be Alex for sure.

[@martinmartin1363]

Judeo Christian laws etc etc,has made a permanent impression on mankind all religions and atheists too accept them. In society we see atheism changing the way mankind thinks for example communism, socialism and liberalism, and has made euthanasia and abortion sexual fluidity etc etc acceptable . If mankind followed no religions then atheism would be the norm and anything would be acceptable because you would make up your own rules, harvesting oragans would be ok as long as you get enough like minded atheists to agree with you, you could abolish the criminal system and go with vigilante justice, you just need enough like minded atheists to agree with you. But society has religions and judeo Christian laws etc, and atheism can never succeed as mankind will always revert back to God.

[@Madonnalitta1]

Yep. Common law principles come from Christianity. Us atheists don't give it enough credit as the basis for a civil society. One of the reasons why the English abolished slavery is because people protested that it was anathema to their religious values of all equal under god.

[@CONEHEADDK]

As the Zen master said: "We'll see".

[@magtak]

@@Madonnalitta1 implying that atheists could never have adopted the same values without religious pretense? Getouttahere.

[@martinmartin1363]

@@magtak Correct without judeo Christian laws or other religions with there laws etc,atheism cannot succeed. Atheism is the denial of god and that the individual is the master of his own destiny,therefore it’s the individual who decides what is right and wrong and belief in his own views and opinions, therefore nothing is criminal or illegal unless the individual believes otherwise, but for this atheism utopia to work all religions and laws etc would have to be abolished. We are seeing some atheists views and opinions like gender fluidity and euthanasia and abortion, which goes against religions , but has been accepted, but is society better or worse, personally l say it’s worse.

[@haniamritdas4725]

Judeo-Christian traditions are an example of religion run amok. I had to escape from Christian mind control programming before I could think a single sane thought. God is not even remotely contemplated by religions. Only by people. And religious people tend to contemplate their neighbors' sins much more than they think of God as anything other than a senile old judge.

[@saltburner2]

Whether actions are good or bad depends on the outcome. (a posteriori, or consequentialism) Whether intentions are good or bad is a priori. Good outcomes can come from bad intentions, Bad outcomes can come from good intentions. (The law of unintended consequences)

[@raymk]

51:35 Humans are not meant to be lazy, that is why you guide the person out of the laziness. The blameworthiness is definitely fuzzy, but the solution is very clear, that is to make the lazy person productive. If there's a person who has a tumor that forces them to commit evil, then the person is responsible not for the action caused by the tumor, but for not preventing the tumor to take an action. If you have a wild bull that might kill a person nearby, you better keep that bull in check, or you can be charged for neglect/ignorance.

[@happywednesday6741]

@1:06:01 The 'getting into a good uni' dilemma is a simple one given a goal...If we want a prosperous society, we want high paying jobs (those that provide most value in a capitalist society) to go to those people who are best at those jobs (best in that they provide the most value). So, if coming from a rich family means you have the means to do that then yes they should get into those universities and get those jobs. If those jobs require just intelligence (say a professor), then we would also want those people to get those jobs. We may also care about representation once we are satisfied with the level of competence we are achieving and we then may want to adjust the system to account for that. None of these are fair in any objective sense.

[@martyspandex]

I disagree with Alex about Emotivism. It's an unsatisfactory theory that most ethicists and philosophers don't support. And It falls down when faced with the Frege-Geach problem.

[@fable4315]

I am no philosopher at all and I have one thought to the imbalance between pleasure and suffering. Can’t we argue that this balance exists, because it gave some sort of evolutionary advantage? It is advantageous for a community of people, if they don’t kill each other and they try to reduce the suffering part, but at the same time if the life of one is threatened, it is also advantageous to induce suffering, if more people of the community would survive because of this (with a bit of egoism, because not all individuals would choose to sacrifice themselves to rescue their people). But it is not advantageous to inflict suffering for a chance of getting some sort of pleasure, because pleasure is not the goal of a species in an evolutionary perspective. Pleasure is good, to convince individuals to reproduce, or eat a nutritious and caloric dense meal. But the feeling of starving will probably force you to eat something to survive, even if it could damage you in the process, while you shouldn’t eat something because it gives you pleasure or even fakes pleasure and you would suffer while doing it to receive the pleasure or after you received the pleasure. Like I said, both gave you none evolutionary advantage, I would argue they would even give you an disadvantage, so it doesn’t evolved. And our intuition is basically something deeply evolutionary, because it is somehow the construct on which your brain and intellect builds upon. At least I had the thought it could be like this, but I don’t understand evolutionary psychology or philosophy enough to rate my own thought, so don’t take my word for it.

[@tobylerone007]

There's some good humour going on here; Alex: "So the affliction comes back and the patient starts feeling a bit noncey..." 😂

[@Fabboxmusic]

This reminded me of Jack Bauer's moral dilemmas in "24", actually that show was really about philosophy in action!

[@simens8646]

One problem with the idea of the utilitarian approach of "minimizing suffering" and "maximizing pleasure" is the notion that a code of ethics should be intuitive and possible to abide by for the human beings that should accept this system of ethics. But for each individual human being there is typically a difference between optimizing the conditions for someone or something that is closer to yourself than for someone or something which is very remote. Most people would care more for their own child than for ten children on the other side of the planet. This isn't a human flaw, but how ethically functioning human beings actually work in practice. An all-encompassing system of utilitarian ethics hence fails because it ignores that we - by design - create ethical conflicts of interest.

[@Mmoll1990]

Another way to look at the 1:10 suffering v. pleasure dilemma is, "well if the 1-10 outcome is more favorable than the 10k-100k outcome, what if we then repeated the favorable outcome 10k times? Is that still more preferable when the result is the exact same numerically? If so, why would that be? I've could propose that the answer could be a good argument for context-based utilitarian decisions, highlighting that there could be more nuance to consider in each and every one of the small, distinguishable decisions.

[@spiralsausage]

I had this same immediate thought, followed by the reaction that they were equivalent. If something is correct, then surely doing it 10 times over is also correct? I think the conversation ended up confused with the difference between inflicting suffering to prevent suffering, vs inflicting suffering to save a life. To me they're quite different though all on a similar continuum, a pain-pleasure spectrum

[@thepasswordisrhubarb]

I would generally agree that we don't have complete free will in the scenarios that Alex describe. But we do have free will in terms of what we choose to obey or worship. And in making this choice, it will have a small but significant effect on our choices and behavior.

[@williamcartedge5583]

People choose who they worship?

[@zalacainbilbao]

'Murder is wrong' is a practical expression. It is just saying that societies that consider murder to be wrong are better to live in than those that don't. Clearly, morality is the child of the times. Slavery used to not be wrong, and it only became wrong when we hit a certain level of technology. If something happened and we went back to a level of technology such as Roman times, then slavery would probably not be wrong again.