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by verisimi 1022 days ago
> 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.