[whisket]

In a vacuum, what you say is true. But, you exist in a society with others. As such, disagreements occur. Sorting this out is an issue. Solutions to this vary, but one solution to it, seeming accepted by Canadians, after a lengthy chain of social argument and negotiation, results in public funding for the arts.

You are just one voice. Take a moment to image a world filled with people exactly the same as you, carbon copies. In that world, which ones of you is happy, which one of you is sad, or do you all live a meager solitary existence because of your lack of willingness to accept what the present you accepts as selfishness and so seek out your utopia of the individual.

[verisimi]

I'm glad you see the reasoning in what I say.

Political answers are one solution, as you say. Tribalism is another. Neither are right to me.

What an actual answer could be like, I don't know. I tend to think that conscious adults do not need to be guided like children. Eg in a social setting you do not need the police - people are capable of managing themselves - in fact they will better manage things without a 'management class'. The self acclaimed authorities are actually the worst of us, parasites on the work of others. The basis of government authority too has no moral basis.

Might I point out too, that normalising theft, force and infantilisation of the masses will not lead us to utopia either. Calling immorality 'right' or 'good' while it is plainly not, is also not a right or good action in itself - it is to embrace an illusion. These actions hasten dystopia, right?

So, in the first place individuals need to understand what basic morality is (the golden rule: do not treat others as you would not want to be treated) and then live their lives accordingly. It is not what the law, your teacher, a judge, a priest, or whoever says - you know what is right already, innately. Don't initiate violence or harm (eg lying) in others.

If more people lived according to their consciences, the change would tranformative. That means police, army, teachers, medical staff, etc would need to reflect on their actions and stop initiating violence and harm. Don't code the dystopian control grid of the future. As I see it, any progressive future change has to come from each individual acting according to their conscience. And in the first place these means that one should not justify immoral acts, even if it is the government undertaking them.

[whisket]

I don't feel like you understand the point I'm trying to make when I suggest a world filled with exact copies of yourself. I do this only to suggest that even in this ideal, like-minded case, conflict will arise, i.e. two yous will not be able to come to a consensus on who is morally at fault given a circumstance.

Consider merging onto a highway. At some point you merge ahead of a car, and at some point you merge behind a car. There is some epsilon around around this point where you lack the perfect behaviour to make the objectively correct decision due to limited human processing capacity. Suppose an accident occurs, then subjectively both yous feel you did the moral thing. Is someone at fault, yes, the person who was within epsilon wrong. Pragmatically you may say no one was at fault, accidents happen. At which point the question becomes how big is an acceptable epsilon. And so on and so on, more questions upon questions. Which need to have answers, which provoke disagreement. Which is why I say you are right in a vacuum, but we don't exist in a vacuum.

A criticism of my argument would be that reality does not work that way and that everything is deterministic, and then we're back to desiring a machine that we can build that will say yes and no and right and wrong. If that machine can exist, we don't have it yet, and if we did I promise at least one person will say it's broken.

If you must, find one thing that is broken in your life, and try and devote your energies to fixing it for the next generation. If the ideas you are promoting are that, so be it. But this road is very long and very difficult and the majority are like me, too lazy, and mostly just coping. A quicker buck is made selling snake oil and using that wealth to buy leisure and hire lawyers. Morals be damned.

[verisimi]

> Consider merging onto a highway. At some point you merge ahead of a car, and at some point you merge behind a car. There is some epsilon around around this point where you lack the perfect behaviour to make the objectively correct decision due to limited human processing capacity. Suppose an accident occurs, then subjectively both yous feel you did the moral thing. Is someone at fault, yes, the person who was within epsilon wrong. Pragmatically you may say no one was at fault, accidents happen. At which point the question becomes how big is an acceptable epsilon. And so on and so on, more questions upon questions. Which need to have answers, which provoke disagreement. Which is why I say you are right in a vacuum, but we don't exist in a vacuum.

I understand your example - I don't know that I have a clear answer - at any rate let us accept that there is an ambiguity there. How does the current system help resolve this?

Perhaps you will say there are laws, judges, etc that will do it. In which case, it would be surely be possible to find a solution without that system, by simply finding someone acceptable to both parties to arbitrate, no?

I certainly don't think like is deterministic - not sure why you're bring that into it.

One can certainly choose a hedonic lifestyle ("morals be damned"). Or one can choose to uncover and learn about oneself more deeply. Or something else. For me, there's only one path that has value of meaning personally. But, even the hedonist that can apply reason, ought to be able to agree that initiating harm is a wrong, not a right.