[oliviabenson]

Do you berate your parents and grandparents each day for their participation in a society that had segregation? Do you walk over hot coals every morning to repent for the benefits you reap by virtue of being born into a society built on the backs of the segregated? Do you deride and express disgust at your peers as they relish in the taste of the pain and suffering of the billions of conscious, feeling animals we genocide every year? Do you opt-out of the industries and services today that take advantage of the suffering of less fortunate individuals forced to service you in order to survive?

Slavery was bad. Slavery is bad. Slavery is not excused. However, frothing at the mouth with rage when speaking about the actions of another society because they don’t share the same moral values as you without thinking a step further is hollow, it is empty, it is meaningless.

Why is “modern thinking” (whatever that means) good? Why is maximum individual freedom at the expense of the whole good? I am like you, I believe in that, but if you interact with people from different cultures, you will discover that is not a belief held by everyone. For many people, individual freedom at the expense of the whole is not good and they have observed that from these “modern” societies. Look at how deeply unhappy the U.S is, the pain and suffering of hundreds of millions of people. Is limiting access to healthcare an example of “modern thinking”?

[llamaimperative]

Where is anyone proposing berating anyone? You can say that a segregated society was less good than a non-segregated one without saying that everyone who lives or lived in a segregated society is worthy of berating/disgust/derision etc. I don't blame individual Iranians for living in a culture that is worse on many important dimensions than western liberal cultures, but that doesn't prevent me from making a fair judgment that (at least on those dimensions) it is actually worse.

Modern thinking: things like pluralism and liberalism. These are actual ideas that emerged in the late 1800s and which are responsible for immense human thriving, immense liberation from suffering all over the world. Upstream of all political and social reform is an intellectual reform, i.e. new "thinking." I am not referring to "maximum individual freedom," and in fact this idea is fundamentally in tension with pluralism and liberalism. Maximum individual freedom at the expense of the whole is a bad idea because it yields bad outcomes, just like various forms of theocracy are bad ideas because they yield bad outcomes.

The ideas that yield expanded suffrage, expanded legal protections, expanded access to prosperity are good ideas because they produce good outcomes. Yes sure, the US/the west broadly isn't perfect, etc, but note that we can discuss all the ways in which it's broken so we can get to work fixing it. That's a good outcome and it's a critical part of the path to more good outcomes on more important dimensions.

You're not arguing that other forms get to better outcomes or whatever, you're just arguing that there's no such thing as good or bad outcomes and therefore no such thing as good or bad ideas.

Try going to Qatar or Iran and asking someone for their opinion on their heads of state. I think you'll find their reaction far more chilling than the fact that our health insurance system is broken.

[oliviabenson]

Good outcomes by what measure? Happiness? Freedom? Community? GDP?

I will argue that by many standards, what we view as barbaric has better outcomes. Have you met a Singaporean? I disagree with their criminal justice system (as I do the U.S. but I rank Singapore’s as “worse”) and yet it has better outcomes for the majority of its citizens by most measures. Are they the measures you and I care about? Probably not, because to you and I, hanging someone for using heroin is not a fair price to be paid for a lower crime rate and higher GDP, but that’s a moral judgement, not some objective “modern” absolute. If you don’t value human life above all else (which many cultures don’t) then killing a few drug addicts a year to make life for millions of others better, that’s inconsequential — and excellent “modern” thinking about doing the most good!

If you can’t imagine why the bad of anti-lgbt sentiment is far outweighed by the good of community-spirit from an anti-lgbt religion then you’re not considering “outcomes”.

[ethanbond]

You are aware that the existence of grey areas does not negate the existence of different ends of the spectrum, right? I’m not arguing the world is simple and entire countries/civilizations can be placed on one end or the other.

I am saying that there are countless dimensions that matter, and there are better and worse locations along those dimensions.

On the dimension of drug addiction rates, Singapore is doing better than the US. On the dimension of personal liberties, Singapore is doing worse than the US.

This observation is not a counter argument to my position, it’s a disproof of yours.

Saying we cannot make value judgments about these things implies we cannot justifiably take action that would nudge us into a different location along any of these different dimensions. How could you possibly decide to change things if there’s no such thing as a better, more preferable possible future state?

Here’s a gut check: are you comfortable with your moral system landing you solidly in the “let’s allow slavery” camp in the 1800s? After all, the disagreement between slave holders and abolitionists was one of culture and opinions, and as we know now there’s no such thing as a better or worse position to hold on such matters. Does that moral system seem like a good one to you?

[oliviabenson]

If your conclusion from my comments is that I would have been indifferent towards slavery then I have either mistakenly passed my comments through an opinion-inverter or you're reading my comments in bad faith. I am very progressive, I hold fringe views that I don't think will be mainstream for a couple more decades.

I hope I wouldn't need to say it, but for the record: I oppose slavery. I oppose gender based discrimination. I oppose sexuality based discrimination. I oppose racism. I oppose the death penalty. I oppose drug criminalisation. I oppose the American prison system. I oppose the smug western superiority complex about our behaviour being "modern" or the "best" or "ahead" of the rest of the world. I oppose referring to Saudi Arabia as "not modern" (or backwards or whatever term is in right now) which I believe is patronising and a view reserved for those without the willingness to be introspective.

For the oppressed gay man in Saudi Arabia, there's a gay man homeless on the streets of the United States, dying from neglect, after being kicked out of their home as a teenager by their Christian fundamentalist parents, thrown to the mercy of a society that couldn't care less about them. Let's put them on a spectrum, how many points is "dying homeless on the streets of America because of being gay" compared to "can't be openly gay in Saudi Arabia"? How many points for "robbed on the streets of San Francisco for the 8th time" when compared to "can leave valuables out in public without concern because there's so little crime in Singapore"?

If your vision for a better world starts with disparaging Saudi Arabia, I fear you are deeply uninspired and will not have the impact on the world that you could have if you instead focused on yourself and your culture. I also hope someday you appreciate the irony of you having worked for Palantir of all companies while talking about moral superiority of the west. I wonder where Peter Thiel would land on our Spectrum Of Moral Superiority. Actually, I don't want to know, let me live another day without reading a defence of that ghoul.

[ethanbond]

No, I didn't say that you are indifferent to nor pro-slavery.

I said that you'd land on the conclusion of allowing it, presumably despite your own personal preferences. Many people who opposed abolition also personally opposed slavery, but used arguments identical to yours to oppose action against slavery. The lack of action would've, obviously, allowed slavery to persist indefinitely.

Can you explain how (or if) your moral system would prevent you from landing on that conclusion? It's a simple question that doesn't depend on theatrics to ask nor answer.

[oliviabenson]

My position is quite simple: I do not believe it's possible to compare the righteousness of cultures, certainly not in a way as reductive as you've proposed, in a way that conveniently makes our culture (America) gooder and the others (Saudi Arabia) badder. Please re-read my original comment, I specifically proposed offering cultural asylum as a way to offer western moral values to others who want to live according to them. I am in favour of cultural evolution, I am in favour of taking action against our moral ills, I believe that in your hypothetical that I would have a moral duty to oppose and take action against slavery within my own culture.

My question to you is, do you believe the United Arab Emirates is more righteous than the United States? According to many measures of "goodness" like the Human Development Index (and the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index) the United Arab Emirates is a more "good" place than the United States and therefore, in your view of comparable righteousness, the United Arab Emirates is a more righteous place? Yet, the United Arab Emirates is, to many westerners (including myself and I am sure you) a place of many moral ills (including one of the most heinous: slavery). Do you believe that on your multi-dimensional most-good morality spectrum the United Arab Emirates out ranks the United States?

I'll answer that for you: no, you don't. And deep beneath this facade of objective morality, you know that morality is so deeply ingrained in your cultural upbringing that you cannot sincerely state that the United Arab Emirates is more righteous than the United States, and that regardless of what any measure, whether it's one dimension or many dimensional, whether it's black and white or a spectrum, regardless of what that measure says, nothing is above your sense of what is right and what is wrong.