[whatshisface]

How can you tell the difference between your own personal hangups and absolute moral truths? That's what we're really debating here. Good luck solving that one in an afternoon...

Option one, check with your community. That's the approach the pro-censorship side is taking, they only propose censoring content that every acceptable silicon valley individual thinks is objectively harmful. They also support drowning witches. Wait, no, wrong culture, they got it wrong, we got it right this time we promise.

Option two, check with the conscience of the accused. Human beings regret most of their decisions, and people are their dumbest in the heat of the moment, and further people tend to dig in when pushed from the outside, so maybe the path to virtue can only be people improving themselves. However if you're convinced that your enemies are all a bunch of complete evil psychopaths then that won't work because clearly psychopaths don't do that.

Option three, optimize for something completely unrelated, and pretend to be motivated by whatever suits your goals - if morals are "in," then pretend to be moral. That's probably what's going to happen if we can't pick between 1 and 2.

[AnimalMuppet]

Option four, have an external standard that is neither based on the community nor the individual. But the problem is, that standard has to be right. If it's wrong, then it's going to be used to censor things that contradict it, and therefore enforce the wrongness. So you need a clear standard of what's right. Christianity once furnished such a standard for the West, but no longer. The closest we have now is the law, but that's halfway to option one.

[whatshisface]

>So you need a clear standard of what's right.

How do you verify it? It's no easier than before.