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JealousPhinehas's avatar

"Nobody has the right to tell a person what to wear on their head"

"Nobody has the right to dislocate/harm my family"

Why? I agree with your conclusions, but I have a religious foundation for what constitutes appropriate human behavior. You and most others have no moral foundation for anything; you have personal preferences.

Changizi: "You have no right to do X".

Tyrant: "Yes I do"

Changizi: ...

This why 99% of the counter-arguments from Team Reality are fact and science based and not principled. Most of Team Reality has no actual moral foundation, for anything. Team Reality has their personal preferences, the tyrants have another set of personal preferences and if all we can point to for a moral foundation is personal preferences and emotion, then discussing studies seems like a superior approach.

There was no battle over principles because we already gave them up, pre-COVID. Therefore, the battle to be won when COVID entered the scene was a battle for emotions, and the tyrants steamrolled us with their superior media apparatus.

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norstadt's avatar

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Forced mask wearing literally prevents free speech. Freedom of assembly was violated with social distancing and lockdowns.

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Mark Changizi's avatar

Foundations for ethical philosophies is a long topic, but just saying one’s is religious doesn’t mean it’s a foundation, much less a good one.

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JealousPhinehas's avatar

What is your foundation for morality, that exists outside of yourself, that others should comply with?

Changizi: "You shouldn't do X"

Tyrant: "Why?"

Changizi: "An ethical philosophy (that I won't disclose, it's a long topic) somewhere out there presumably says you shouldn't do it. Take my word for it, you shouldn't do X."

You don't have a good answer and I'm guessing you know it.

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Mark Changizi's avatar

Going from “is” to “ought” is a standard, deep philosophical problem, one that I have written a lot about, but mostly in the context of prescriptive oughts in the inductive reasoning domain (https://www.changizi.com/uploads/8/3/4/4/83445868/changizibrain25000chapter3.pdf) [and also I have some thoughts on it from a very different angle in Expressly Human].

It’s a difficult issue, but having one’s foundational ought come from religion is no panacea.

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JealousPhinehas's avatar

I've taken University level logic courses. It's likely you know more about the topic than myself. I'm not really following your point.

It seems like your answer is that you don't have an answer, here's a complicated path that you think might lead to an answer someday, and you don't like what you think my answer would be.

I mean well here, but if the best you can muster to the question "Why should I comply with your moral system?" is "Start by reading my 88 page chapter on inductive reasoning", maybe you can see why Team Reality avoided taking a principled stand.

At the most basic level, I think Christianity offers answers to the fundamental questions in a consistent manner. I think your potential

moral systematic falls apart before it even gets out of the gate. Why does morality ever emerge from random cosmic events? How could your moral system ever possibly be non-arbitrary? In your world, we are cosmic space goo, but also we must apply the golden rule, because... see Ch. 3 on inductive reasoning.

Maybe you think Team Reality should have focused more on principled arguments to help us win the emotional battle, because these answers certainly wouldn't fly among the general population.

I mean no offense, honestly. I like your substack.

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Mark Changizi's avatar

That chapter deals with a rigorous system that, via two utterly defensible and seemingly impossible to deny axiomatic principles of “ought,” allows one to derive all the oughts within science and inductive reasoning.

For ethical oughts, one similarly has to start with a super small number of axiomatic oughts, and doing that is… difficult. I believe I have a good start on a small set of oughts from which *most* of my suite of ethics can be derived, but I don’t have it rigorously worked out like I do for science and inductive oughts. Much less something to take up in detail in the comments!

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norstadt's avatar

What if COVID had Ebola-level mortality and masks worked perfectly? That is how it was sold to people. Sometimes the technical details do matter. We already accept dress codes that require covering various body parts.

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Mark Changizi's avatar

But if it were TRULY an emergency can we THEN suspend liberties?

No. And here’s why…

(1) Civil liberties are FOR the scary emergencies.

https://youtu.be/QKyJXYT-z-0

(2) Violating civil liberties IS society’s greatest emergency.

https://youtu.be/e-p3GY8rGqE

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