It all starts with defining what morality means. The way I would define morality is behaviors that maximize flourishing for sentient creatures and minimize suffering. While it is clearly difficult to quantify flourishing and suffering, there are behaviors that clearly cause suffering in this world and impede the opportunity for flourishing and, by the above definition of morality, are plainly immoral. The way I see it, rejecting the possibility that flourishing and suffering can be quantified at all is the only argument that can be made against moral absolutism. Everything else is just quibbling over relevant variables across the spectrum of available behaviors to determine what makes them more or less moral. There is always a behavior that is objectively the more moral choice, but it might be difficult in practice to determine which is the more moral choice due to a lack of available relevant data. The absence of said data shouldn't be assumed to be because it doesn't/can't exist, but rather that it hasn't been collected. Rejecting the idea that there is always a more moral behavior amongst several choices is the dangerous assumption, imo.
I've never heard a rational defense of moral relativism that made any sense. If there are no moral truths, then serial killers have done nothing wrong for example. If a moral relativist admits that there are some moral truths, then moral relativism is completely indefensible. At that point, you're just arguing over what is and what is not a moral truth.
I stopped paying for YouTube the moment Google killed Google Play Music and forced YouTube Music on me. Now Google gets no money from me and Apple does because they still offer a true music library service.
Yes, Koch has apparently funded a good amount of Ken Burns' work. I have no reason to suspect that Ken Burns has let Koch influence the content of his work, however.
This isn't even a new phenomenon, accusations of antisemitism were also often thrown at anti-Zionists when there were plenty of good political reasons not to establish and prop up the state of Israel. (What's also funny about that is there were/are actually antisemites who were/are in favor of getting rid of Jews from their country by exporting them to Israel.)
He probably doesn't deserve a devil's advocate, but that said, I'm pretty sure Louis didn't masturbate in public, but rather during phone calls and in private in front of unconsenting or at least not explicitly consenting company, from the accounts I've read. I'm not defending it because it's abusive and wrong, but it's also not quite the same thing as masturbating in public.
Yeah, except Bernie's supporters voted for Hillary at higher rates than Hillary folks voted for Obama, so maybe Hillary, her dumb fucking insecure email server, her lack of personality, and the DNC who helped her cheat her way through primary debates are the real ones to blame, not the progressives. She was a terrible candidate who the right hated and independents didn't like much better and she proved she was a terrible candidate by losing to the worst Republican candidate in the last hundred years. She had all the help she should've needed from progressives.
Yeah, I would really like to see them either stop doing that or make it very clear in their email that you should only respond if you know the answer to the question.
I would highly recommend the recent Freakonomics Radio series about whaling. It's Episodes 549-551 and the bonus episode from 2023-08-06. If you're firmly against killing any living creature (or at least sentient creatures), I highly doubt it will change your mind (and I don't think that it should or that it tries to), but I also think it is really fascinating learning about the history of the whaling industry and hearing the perspective of a modern whaler in the bonus episode. Putting aside the obvious ethical issues with killing sentient creatures, it's interesting to consider things like whether there's a sustainable level of whaling, what a sustainable quota would look like, and how much we're in competition with certain whale species for harvesting fish as food for our own species. I personally appreciated how unbiased Freakonomics tried to be in their discussion of the topic.
The best work schedule I ever had was a Navy watch schedule that was 4x12', 3 days off, 3x 12', 4 days off before a switch to night schedule. Aside from switching from days to nights every 2 weeks, I absolutely loved it.
If people give me shit about my Android phone, I point out that their phone can fold exactly once before they'll need a new one. Android is still the only option for power users.
pitninja @ stu @lemmy.pit.ninja Posts 0Comments 152Joined 1 yr. ago
It all starts with defining what morality means. The way I would define morality is behaviors that maximize flourishing for sentient creatures and minimize suffering. While it is clearly difficult to quantify flourishing and suffering, there are behaviors that clearly cause suffering in this world and impede the opportunity for flourishing and, by the above definition of morality, are plainly immoral. The way I see it, rejecting the possibility that flourishing and suffering can be quantified at all is the only argument that can be made against moral absolutism. Everything else is just quibbling over relevant variables across the spectrum of available behaviors to determine what makes them more or less moral. There is always a behavior that is objectively the more moral choice, but it might be difficult in practice to determine which is the more moral choice due to a lack of available relevant data. The absence of said data shouldn't be assumed to be because it doesn't/can't exist, but rather that it hasn't been collected. Rejecting the idea that there is always a more moral behavior amongst several choices is the dangerous assumption, imo.