[coffeeaddict1]

> That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards.

This is true. Moral standards don't seem to be universal throughout history. I don't think anyone can debate this. However, this is different that claiming there is an objective morality.

In other words, humans may exhibit varying moral standards, but that doesn't mean that those are in correspondence with moral truths. Killing someone may or may not have been considered wrong in different cultures, but that doesn't tell us much about whether killing is indeed wrong or right.

[grantmuller]

It seems worth thinking about it in the context of the evolution. To kill other members of our species limits the survival of our species, so we can encode it as “bad” in our literature and learning. If you think of evil as “species limiting, in the long run” then maybe you have the closest thing to a moral absolute. Maybe over the millennia we’ve had close calls and learned valuable lessons about what kills us off and what keeps us alive, and the survivors have encoded them in their subconscious as a result. Prohibitions on incest come to mind.

The remaining moral arguments seem to be about all the new and exciting ways that we might destroy ourselves as a species.

[throwaway290]

Using some formula or fixed law to compute what's good is a dead end.

> To kill other members of our species limits the survival of our species

Unless it's helps allocate more resources to those more fit to help better survival, right?;)

> species limiting, in the long run

This allows unlimited abuse of other animals who are not our species but can feel and evidently have sentience. By your logic there's no reason to feel morally bad about it.

[grantmuller]

> Using some formula or fixed law to compute what's good is a dead end.

Who said anything about a formula? It all seems conceptual and continually evolving to me. Morality evolves just like a species, and not by any formula other than "this still seems to work to keep us in the game"

> Unless it's helps allocate more resources to those more fit to help better survival, right?;)

Go read a book about the way people behave after a shipwreck and ask if anyone was "morally wrong" there.

> By your logic there's no reason to feel morally bad about it.

And yet we mostly do feel bad about it, and we seem to be the only species who does. So perhaps we have already discovered that lack of empathy for other species is species self-limiting, and built it into our own psyches.

[throwaway290]

> Who said anything about a formula?

In this thread some people say this "constitution" is too vague and should be have specific norms. So yeahh... those people. Are you one of them?)

> It all seems conceptual and continually evolving to me. Morality evolves just like a species

True

> keep us in the game"

That's a formula right there my friend

> Go read a book about the way people behave after a shipwreck and ask if anyone was "morally wrong" there.

?

> And yet we mostly do feel bad about it, and we seem to be the only species who does. So perhaps we have already discovered that lack of empathy for other species is species self-limiting, and built it into our own psyches.

or perhaps the concept of "self-limiting" is meaningless.

[grantmuller]

>In this thread some people say this "constitution" is too vague and should be have specific norms. So yeahh... those people. Are you one of them?)

I have no idea what you're talking about, so I guess I'm not "one of them".

> That's a formula right there my friend

No, it's an analogy, or a colloquial metaphor.

[throwaway290]

> I have no idea what you're talking about

Read the top level comment and "objective anchors". It's always great to know the context before replying.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46712541

There's no objective anchors. Because we don't have objective truth. Every time we think we do and then 100 years later we're like wtf were we thinking.

> No, it's an analogy, or a colloquial metaphor

Formula IS a metaphor... I wrote "formula or fixed law" ... what do you think we're talking about, actual math algebra?