Comment by dvt
15 hours ago
> What is today a moral imperative is not the same as what was moral 50/100 years ago
This is absolutely not true, and I would strongly suggest taking an ethics course. One of the most fascinating realities of the human condition is that it does seem that moral imperatives tend to be constant, the most obvious of which is the Golden Rule (which is at least 3000 years old), but there are many (the Ten Commandments or Hammurabi's Code are good jumping off points).
Hogwash. We don't even have a consistent set of ethics on how to treat animals today, in the age of the Internet. We have people who refuse to eat meat because of how the animals are treated, and we have places where the locals make sport out of torturing animals to death, and indeed, our own recent history includes that as well (look up badgering).
Not to mention, the variation in treatment of homosexuals (including what constitutes homosexuality), people of different skin colors, handedness, how rape is treated in various cultures (often tied in with notions of property and ownership of all things), or even the various definitions of rape... The list goes on.
Maybe there's a core there in terms of how we treat a given in-group, but equally important is who belongs in that group and why, and that part seems to be tremendously flexible. Ditto for what constitutes acceptable treatment of outsiders.
That we vary doesn't mean that there is no consensus. There is consensus on many things, and the disagreements we encounter are a source of strife exactly because of the groups that do agree on each side.
Who the consensus extends to is really the heart of the matter. Most people agree that killing certain people is wrong, but if they disagree on who those certain people are, there's no useful commonality. Some people believe that all killing of others is wrong, some believe that it's okay to kill others under certain circumstances (which can range from a threat to one's life, to petty "dishonor"), and some people historically believed that killing was a necessary duty (e.g. human sacrifice). There is no useful commonality to be had there. You can't appeal to the humanity of someone who doesn't see you as being the same as them, and the restrictions for inclusion as one of them can be arbitrary, broad, and fickle.
By definition, variation is the opposite of consensus.
You seem to be arguing that the one socially acceptable way to do something is not constant, rather than that moral imperatives truly do change. The reason there are still so many competing philosophies from hundreds or thousands of years ago is because they all more or less make their own kinds of good points to different people or in different situations. That largely doesn't change over time.
One example is the trolley problem and its variations. There's no one correct answer. There are people who believe that interacting with the switch would make you responsible, and there are people who believe that not interacting with the switch when you had the chance would make you responsible. There are other beliefs too, but my point is there's no one single way to view it.
I tend to have a variety of views in general about all things, in part due to being multiple entities (see profile) but also depending on circumstances, rather than sticking to any one philosophy.
That people's beliefs about X vary is not evidence that X itself varies. People have different beliefs about whether vaccines cause autism, but this doesn't mean that sometimes vaccines cause autism and sometimes they don't. Rather, some people are wrong.
Similarly, people have different beliefs about whether it's okay to inflict massive suffering on animals in exchange for some pleasure for us. But this doesn't necessarily mean that sometimes it's okay to do that and sometimes it isn't. It could just be that some people are wrong.
Ditto for other moral issues. It could be that the people who say (e.g.) homosexuality should be punished by death are wrong about this.
You seem to believe that there's one consistent set of moral guidelines that separate people into wrong and right camps. This is not true, and most likely never will be true. Instead, there are many competing moral philosophies, many from hundreds or thousands of years ago, that do or don't encourage certain behavior. People tend to pick philosophies, or at the very least act consistently with some set of them, and different people pick or act with different ones.
Vaccines causing autism is simply false though, regardless of any philosophy. It's rather the inverse, much like violence can cause video games.
I think its more accurate to say where you find consensus in morality, e.g. murder is wrong outside authorized violence (e.g. war or policing), you also find extensive selective pressure behind this behavior. It makes sense that all collective society cultures would outlaw murder; such a behavior is incompatible with collective living behavior whether you are in a cave or a modern skyscraper. Early societies have always been rejecting those alleles from their gene pool.
When you find shades of grey and great spectrum of opinions across time or space, its more that there isn't a strong selective pressure either way. How people are expected to dress is a good example of this. This has no real affect on society behavior or fecundity, so you see a spectrum of opinions that explain the differences between what you see in the middle east and a beach in brazil.
I did a philosophy minor, one class of which was the philosophy of ethics. There are many rules that definitely are not ethical today even if they were in the past so I don't think the point you're making really holds. Hammurabi (an eye for an eye) is probably one of the worst examples you could have cited.
Can't say I agree with this, considering lex talionis[1] is still the primary directive of most legal systems when it comes to criminal law, as well as basically all military operations (jus in bello, jus ad bellum, etc.). The principle of proportionality ("an eye for an eye") also is relevant to self-defense, capital punishment, etc.
In fact, I would counter and say that Hammurabi's Code is a quintessential example.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/jla/article/18/1/19/8471491
Lex talonis is an idea by humans, for humans. At it's core are dozens of untrue assumptions about the way the world, and the other actors in it work. All of those assumptions are about monkey social orders. Many of them are wrong.
For example it assumes the other party can fear, and has a sense of self preservation. Those things are often untrue of other humans, let alone machines.
More fundamentally it also assumes all sort of things about free will itself, implying that retaliation is "deserved" and other value judgments that only make sense if the other party has free will to begin with. Something which science tells us is debatable even about humanity.
No, game theory tells us the right answer and it's not "hold back when retaliating" or "teach them a lesson." Those are things only humans would do, and even then only the ones who share your neurology and upbringing.
Hammurabi's code may feel fundamental, but it's no more fundamental to the human condition than boys preferring blue to pink.
Morality is knowledge, and it evolves like other knowledge does.
It's not saying "Go and blind someone because it will be fun."
It's still an implementation of justice, and relies on a bedrock conception of justice as moral goal.
We don't agree with the implementation, but we still share the goal in the abstract.
The law isn't and never has been a moral benchmark. At best, a law reflects social consensus at the time of its enactment, but even that's not a given.
And proportionality matters. Community service and counseling, loss of time (imprisonment), and loss of a hand have all been used to punish theft. Which is correct? Which is the more moral, because it doesn't seem to me that they're the same?
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Did the Golden Rule apply to women, gays, and slaves over the last 3000 years?
The definition of moral imperative is "an ethical principle, rule, or action that is strongly felt, urgent, and required because it is morally right." The Golden Rule is clearly not a strongly felt part of the human condition, or it would not be so ignored over ages and continents.
Thank you. The OP is urging others to take an ethics class, when they need to be taking a history class. The golden rule apparently didn't apply to the guy whose heart you had to eat to keep the sun rising.
You take a class. Do you think coveting is immoral? Retributive justice? Human sacrifice?
Seriously. This idea that humanity has not spent millennia analyzing these concepts is pervasive in the modern world, and the only thing I can think to attribute it to is a lack of education. Not because I want to be insensitive, but because as soon as you start absorbing material and integrating the real timeline, you can't unsee it.
Is hammurabi's code moral? I don't know if I think that someone who takes out a person's eye deserves to have their own eye taken out also
Hammurabi Building Law 230: If a house falls due to improper construction, and kills the son of the owner, the son of that builder shall be put to death.
Given my dad designed and built homes, I'm very much against this rule.
We still have criminal negligence laws, so apart from the capital punishment (which, at least in the US, requires intent), it's actually pretty forward-thinking. Of course professionals being criminally negligent should be charged. Are you seriously saying that you don't think the crew of the Key Bridge collapse[1] incident ship shouldn't be held criminally responsible?
[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/05/13/nx-s1-5819609/federal-governm...
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I seem to remember that a lot of it is about how much to pay when you kill someone, and the relative prices of slaves and women. Or am I thinking of Ur-Nammu.
I agree, I believe I would disagree with most of the Hammurabi's code, and I also happen to disagree with the majority of the ten commandments. (I am an atheist leftist humanist, cosmopolitan liberal socialist.)
Shit, I'm so sorry to the surgeons who saved me from eye cancer!
It's not the case that all aspects are constant. There's some common themes across cultures and times, but it's definitely not the case that the morality of ancient people was the same as today.