[tehchromic]

It's a well meaning article. My first thought is that it's generated by AI in the service of some moderate yet far reaching religious org.

"Finding our intrinsic values is no trivial task, but something that forces us to stare into the core of our humanity."

I think it misses a critical topical conclusion which is that "intrinsic values" means little or nothing to many, and many folks are fairly incapable of competently doing the kind of contemplative meditating required to arrive at some set of rules like that, and so they look to others.

And here's the crux of the missed point:

To really resonate with our intrinsic values, we need to drop the myth that a rational economic system exists, and build one with the value of present and future human life explicitly built in.

We already have a massive framework for understanding individual intrinsic values in terms of the sanctity of human life and that's the great mystery religions that have birth to our modern age. What's needed now is a planetary ethos where intrinsic human value is put in the proper context of the ecological reality of the biological and geological systems and processes that sustain us. Building that culture requires myth and magic, but also is an intensely rational project. There is really no way around it, and any philosophical text intended to shift the cultural landscape is incomplete without it.

[jcelerier]

> first thought is that it's generated by AI

We're in the Yosemite park bear era of AI: there is considerable overlap between the capabilities of the most intelligent AI and the most stupid humans

... And that's very generous to humans

[openfuture]

Please join us on matrix! Starting from datalisp.is.

[pas]

> sanctity of human life

what's so sacrosanct about life? life is common, many argue too common. (see the overpopulation hysteria.)

I'd argue there are better things that we should hold dear, like empathy and cooperation, the resilience of getting up after devastating events, our ability to cooperate in even the most abstract frameworks.

[krapp]

>I'd argue there are better things that we should hold dear, like empathy and cooperation, the resilience of getting up after devastating events, our ability to cooperate in even the most abstract frameworks.

You can't hold those things dear without first believing in the sanctity of human life. If human life has no value above the value of human endeavor neither do empathy, cooperation or resilience, human life becomes just another resource to exploit and consume.

I disagree religion is the only possible framework through which this can be expressed, however. It's entirely possible to hold human life sacrosanct in its own liminal terms without invoking the supernatural.

[brnaftr361]

You're not negating properly, you've got to balance both sides of the equation.

If we discount life altogether, there is perhaps a greater hidden element of value which goes unseen.

Instead, if we acknowledge that all life is meaningless, that we're on some infinitesimal little body floating around a star whose life is slowly ticking away set to vaporize everything ever known - if we really acknowledge that desperation, certainly the closest to universal value we might have, then we can engage with reality and work together. Real egalitarianism, and trans-species as well, because at least within the scope of our limited knowledge we're the only advanced life known, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the only planet with confirmed life.

The sanctity of life shit is just a means to defer the ultimate end that we're all fraught to look into, our inevitable deaths. It's a write off. Chris's life was sacrosanct, he died delivering Pizza Hut for $8.50/h, he died painfully and left behind a mangled corpse. We make a big, superficial guffaw about it. That's fucking tragic! We, collectively, should all be fucking horrified that someone was relegated to that, horrified that someone could possibly die like that - but it's sacred by default - that's bullshit though, we let Chris fall into a swirling oblivion that carried him to a rock bottom and put him in a position that made it really likely he'd die doing the shameful shit of delivering a pizza.

Sanctity of life is what allows us to justify the egregious, not the lack thereof.

[NateEag]

> and put him in a position that made it really likely he'd die doing the shameful shit of delivering a pizza.

Delivering a pizza is not "shameful shit".

It brings warmth, sustenance, and comfort to those Chris delivered it to.

What's shameful is being paid tens or hundreds of times Chris's annual salary to manipulate people into clicking on ads or continuing to doomscroll.

[the_af]

> real egalitarism

... is worthless if you don't value life. Who cares about egalitarism for motes of dust?

[sifar]

You do realize none of them would exist without life.

[pas]

yes, of course, but life is just a necessary not sufficient condition.

[sifar]

Sorry i cannot parse this.

How can you value something and not the thing that it cannot exist without ?

[Thiez]

Life cannot exist without excrement, but relatively few people think highly of poop. What is your point? If you go far enough with your reasoning you have to basically value the entire universe and everything in it to be allowed to say you value any particular thing. It dilutes the meaning of valuing something to the point where the word/concept itself becomes meaningless.

[the_af]

I disagree. You cannot hold this principle "in theory" without understanding the specifics of this case.

It makes no sense to value (human) empathy and cooperation without valuing (human) life. You can argue about first principles, excrement and the universe, but this will still be true.

Without valuing human life, all sorts of things start to unravel in our society. Of course, just life is not enough! Empathy, cooperation, kindness, curiosity, etc: all things that make the human experience worthy.

[rhn_mk1]

In the way that you value the end, not the means, I guess.

[mensetmanusman]

In the rational context of the universe, life is impossibly rare.