[rayiner]

That's fair, but I think there's a clear rule to be applied based on functional and practical considerations, which is to acknowledge that widely held assumptions must be debated in good faith. To take a political example, the majority of people in the world assume that marital unions (which are a feature of virtually every human society) exist primarily for the purpose of birthing and raising children. You can disagree with that premise, you can point out the other areas where society has agreed to deviate from that premise, you can point out the cruel ramifications of that rule in certain cases, etc. But you can't declare that premise ideologically and morally off-limits. Because you can't as a practical matter achieve a functional society by treating a wildly held belief as outside the scope of good faith debate.

[tptacek]

You could have said that about slavery in the 18th century.

You can, in fact, declare some popular premises morally off-limits.

[brhsagain]

The whole point is that it's only "obvious" now in hindsight that slavery is wrong. Now that our society treats that as an axiom, you can say, well, there are some things that are obviously just axiomatically wrong, let's ban those things. But if you were back in the 18th century it wouldn't have been an axiom.

[tptacek]

"All slaves must be set free" was exactly as true in 1750 and it is in 2022. This isn't a historical or sociological analysis; it's moral. If you built a time machine and traveled back to 1750, you could not morally entertain the then-popular norm of slavery.

[suslik]

I am sincerely curious: are you able to provide a criterion or two that would allow me to make objective moral decisions (the possibility of which I think you are postulating)? How do I know slavery is immoral, besides that it is considered immoral in the given cultural context? I am sure an Athenian gentleman 3rd century BC didn't think that way; Aristotle surely didn't - and he spent a lifetime on systematic reasoning, ethics incuded.

[brhsagain]

I think there's actually a big difference between morality and truth, and what you're saying applies to truth and not morality. If you went around telling people about germ theory, you could say, I'm objectively right and you're objectively wrong, here's the proof. The truth is the truth; it's an invariant. It's arrived at through discovery and investigation. Morality is about people fighting to get what they want. The "right answer" is arrived at through conflict and seeing who wins. We live in a society where "slavery is bad" won.

When you say we should ban debate of slavery because it's settled, what you're in effect saying is that society has made a decision and you would like that decision to be final. So would I. But there's nothing final about it. It's not like God has spoken on the matter. Deciding to ban further appeal of the matter is just moral entrepreneurship, not some absolute right answer.

[tptacek]

Slavery is not wrong simply because the union won.

[nec4b]

No you couldn't say that about slavery! Because only a small privileged group was able to have slaves. On the other hand a majority of people gets married or live in a relationship. What a weird comparison you made comparing marriage to slavery.

[tptacek]

I'm obviously not comparing marriage to slavery. I'm observing that at various times, ideas that we today absolutely foreclose on were live debates, or even prevailing norms. In the early 18th century, if you'd gone around saying that all slaves must immediately be freed, and the matter wasn't up for discussion, you'd had been right. But Rayiner's logic could be turned against what you were saying, too.

Just because 51% of people believe something, that doesn't mean we're bound to respect it. If that was true, Wikipedia would be infallible.

[nec4b]

Basically you don't want to have a discussion about something because 50%+ people were wrong about something at some point in history. And you give an example of slavery when rayiner was making a concrete point about marriage. Would ever post on a climate change thread about how once the majority of scientist believed earth was the center of the Universe and were wrong and therefore because majority of scientist was wrong once they are also wrong about the climate change today?

[landemva]

> only a small privileged group was able to have slaves.

That may be a USA-centric view. It differed in other areas.

https://www.historyireland.com/from-baltimore-to-barbary-the...

[rayiner]

Hence my caveat regarding that “functional” and “practical” considerations. If maintaining a functioning social order isn’t the goal, and a bloody civil war is acceptable in pursuit moral ends, then obviously my point doesn’t apply.

[tptacek]

No, of course that's not true. You just haven't set up a coherent classification here. It's easy to come up with comparably black-and-white issues where we did not in fact have to tear down society to resolve them. I can think of 3 off the top of my head.

[rayiner]

All of those issues ripped tears in our society when they were decided by force (court orders being a form of force, backed by the threat of men with guns) instead of building consensus. It’s a civil war on the installment plan. It’s notable that Europe mostly handled those same issues by consensus and is much less internally polarized as a result.

[fallingknife]

Well, seeing as we didn't get rid of slavery, but rather outsourced it, no you can't.

[tptacek]

This is incoherent.

[dp-hackernews]

Is it time for tea?