[bawolff]

> As vegans and vegetarians (and decades earlier, non-smokers) have shown, you can have a principled stance on something without forcing that stance on others.

If you truly believe something is evil, i think that is difficult. Like imagine if someone said, i believe murder is wrong but i dont want to force that on others. Or, i dont really like slavery but that's just me and others should be slave owners if they feel that is right.

Obviously there is a spectrum of moral ills, and not all are created equal, but if you truly believe something is abhorent, you can't be a good person and tolerate it in others

[juleiie]

There is no such thing as good person or evil person anywhere else other than in human society.

It’s just a brain fart to make you cooperate and evolutionary survive. You don’t need to listen to this primitive instinct. You can just choose consciously what you think is the best.

Do not share or propagate or promote this view however. Our society only works thanks to most people being slaves to these tremors.

Sometimes I get an impression that it isn’t even a freedom of choice, some must perceive themselves as "good people" as a highest imperative. Whatever that means for current century.

I like to view myself as grey person.

[bawolff]

> You don’t need to listen to this primitive instinct. You can just choose consciously what you think is the best.

Which is why we have jails.

[juleiie]

Which is why my only enemy and true life long hate target is the government. Not that I do not appreciate its function, but the only solution to eat a cake and have it too is to become politician and be the government.

Become part of the system, get it to work for you. Seems like very popular hobby in some circles

[bawolff]

Personally that is not for me, but there certainly exist people who follow that path. But it is a dangerous path, take too much and there is a popular revolution and its off with your head (or more realistically you piss off the wrong person and get in some sort of trouble).

Society is a dynamic system with lots of forces acting on it. Everything is balanced with various controls to stop any one person from taking too much advantage.

[layla5alive]

"Our society only works thanks to most people being slaves to these tremors."

If everyone defects, the system breaks down. Morality is good and it is actually logical - it solves the prisoners dilemma and pushes cooperation instead of defection. It also reduces harm and has lots of other good properties. I feel that how we affect others matters, but even if you're just a sociopath doing the math, defecting is a strategy that burns things down at scale, not a smart one. Tit for tat with forgiveness is not only morally aligned, but also more prosperous in scenarios that aren't just one-off interactions with strangers.

[juleiie]

Morality is very good, please always obey its principles.

You must be aware though that some people will stab you in the back if the reward is bigger than widely understood consequences. I mean no wonder society is wired to hate that, this is a true critical code execution vulnerability that will never be patched.

This is also the reason why we have decentralised governance systems such as democracy. It isn’t about preventing psychopaths, it’s about pitting them against each other.

It’s not about having zero bombs. It’s about having enough bombs to destroy everything if someone drops a single one.

That’s the pattern and framework of how to tame warring monkeys into skyscraper builders.

When an earthquake forms a mountain it doesn’t do this consciously from what we know. The same is true for skyscrapers. Of course on an individual level there is an illusion of signing papers, a development plan. But what really happened was two ambitions colliding in massive clash and the resulting force just so happens to point up in the sky.

[skrebbel]

> If you truly believe something is evil, i think that is difficult.

Yes, and that’s my point. Most vegans truly believe that meat equals murder. Yet the vast majority of them will go out for dinner with people they truly deeply believe are (indirect) murderers. This is indeed very difficult for them.

Locking yourself out of society isn’t likely to help achieve any sort of moral progress.

[bawolff]

> Locking yourself out of society isn’t likely to help achieve any sort of moral progress.

On the contrary, i think most moral progress (albeit also many social ills) has been wrought through social pressure.

[cm2012]

A minority cannot socially pressure a majority, it will just backfire

[bawolff]

I think there is a selection bias here. If it succeedes the minority becomes a majority.

I think a good example are religious movements (obviously i dont want to equate religion with morality, but often they come with certain moral views attached). They start as a minority, and either they die or they take over. Christianity was a minority at one point.

[em-bee]

a tiny minority can't but somewhere between 10% or a quarter is enough to pressure the rest to support them. for example to force the majority of restaurants to make sure their food is halal, because otherwise muslims would not eat there. or to port your software to run on macs, etc...

it depends of course on the cost of compliance. halal food is fine, because everyone can eat it. a minority of vegans could not force restaurants to stop serving meat because that would in turn exclude the majority of meat eaters.

[bawolff]

While i agree with your general point, i'm not sure i agree with your example. i don't think a minority of muslims (or jews) are going to convince all resturants to stop serving pork, because bacon is too popular.

[em-bee]

in some places i have traveled to that were predominately christian but had a minority muslim population, pork was very rare, and most shops and restaurants indicated that they were halal. now pork could have been rare for other reasons, but places advertising halal food clearly can only come from the muslim minority. although, maybe it was just muslims running all the restaurants. no idea. i don't know what it takes to be allowed to advertise halal food. i know kosher food requires an inspection by someone authorized. and it also takes considerable effort.

this example just came to mind from my observations. i didn't check any statistics other than the religions in the region. also i just realize, i don't remember seeing this in singapore, which also has a 15% muslim population. so yeah, it looks like you are right, and it is a bad example after all.

[ajam1507]

The history of social pressure would disagree with you.

[cm2012]

No it wouldnt