Ask Lemmy

Pay your taxes, use your blinker, and don't preach at people. As long as you follow those guidelines have a fucking field day with your life.

Dont break the weekend safety brief.

• Do not add to the population
• Do not subtract from the population
• Do not end up in the newspaper, hospital or jail. -- If you do end up in jail, establish dominance quickly.

Obviosuly this a a comedic response but it covers most of the bases.

Don't attract too much attention to yourself and you can get way with a lot of shit.

A lot of it is just Kant's categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

Also leave the camp better than you found it, because small improvements add up.

Do what you think is right, but spend some time considering if it's right or not first.

Recognizing when you're not considering and just going by intuition or emotional response would probably already put you ahead of most of us.

Empathy seems to be necessary (but I'm not sure if sufficient) for logical moral consideration because you cannot justify your position if you purposefully ignore another's, and considering someone else's perspective without prejudice is empathy.

What are you most basic principles for life?

Spell check

1. Human rights as a consensual starting pooint of what is good.
2. Rational skepticism, ranking knowledge/belief based on the proximity to an international scientific consensus.
3. Expressing my opinions and questioning others opinions in a polite and nuanced way that allows civilized discussion. It increases the chance of common progress rather than strengthening tribal bubbles.

I'm going to die.

That's it. There's not much I'm really certain of, but I'm pretty damn certain that I'm going to die.

So I ask myself - how do I want to live my life in light of this fact?

your*

Wrong, IMO, is defined by the violation of the will of another.

That's the common element to all things that are broadly considered wrong.

For instance, if somebody chooses to give you something, that's a gift and it's fine. But if you take that same something from them against their will, that's stealing, and wrong. In both cases, the exact same thing happened - a thing went from being their possession to being yours. The difference - the thing that separates the right act from the wrong one - is that one was done according to the will of the other person, while the other was done contrary to their will.

And the same holds true consistently - assault, kidnapping, rape, even murder - none of them are characterized by what happens, but by the fact that it happens contrary to the will of the "victim." And in fact, that's what defines a "victim" - whatever has been done to them was done against their will.

And it should be noted that there's an odd sort of relative aspect to this, since the exception to the rule is the violation of the rule.

What I mean by that is that if one decides to violate the will of another, one is instantly wrong, which essentially negates the requirement that ones will not be violated. Your will to violate the will of another not only can be but should be itself violated.

I also have an idea for reconciling the need for an effectively absolute set of moral standards with the fact that morality is necessarily subjective and relative, but that'd require another, and likely even longer, essay.

1. Accept the things you can't change, and improve the things you can change. I disagree with the classical stoics on their emphasis on individual action and think that these principles can and should be applied on a societal level.

2. Mind your own business. If someone is doing something that doesn't have any real impact on your life or the lives of people you care about, ignore it. If someone is gay or trans that doesn't impact you at all. If someone has weird religious beliefs, let them believe them as long as they're not hurting anyone.

3. The supernatural should be ignored for society level decisions because it cannot be proven and hasn't been demonstrated. If someone wants to go to a psychic or astrologer for personal decisions I disagree with that but that's on them.

4. Everyone has a god they worship. It may not be Jesus or Allah, but it may be money, a sport team, or maybe a musical band. Ritual and community are things that make us feel good. Coming together with a group of people for a common cause to enjoy something together is built into our psychology. The problem of replacing religion with bands and sports teams is that it comes with the fun parts of religion without the discussion of morality or urging to do good that religion can bring. You don't see Kansas City Chiefs fans giving 10% of their income to the poor, for example. My ideal world would have secular temples to Reason where people come together to sing and discuss philosophy and work together for a common good. This one is weirder than the others and I won't be mad if anyone thinks this is absurd. I just think that we have rejected religion without having a satisfactory replacement for the good things it provides.

Don't be a cunt to...

... Yourself ... Others ... people in need

But...

... Not bring yourself in danger ... Not Bring Others in danger ... Not let people bully, use, hurt etc. you.

In the immortal words of J.

"Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'."

Some of my moral principles

• Treat others how you think they would want to be treated, but not at all costs.

• You don't have to like everyone, and not everyone has to like you. Although, being liked by others generally leads to having a better life.

• Avoid lying or "distorting the truth". But, sometimes lying is necessary, like to keep a friend's secret.

Some of my existential thoughts

• There are no permanent consequences other than death (I do not believe in an afterlife, although I find the concept interesting). There are no rules to follow, just temporary consequences you may have to deal with. You can make up your own rules and follow them, or not follow them.

• Perception is just a tool used by your brain (a small part of the universe) to process the chaos that is the universe. A similar universe could be described by a very complex particle simulation. That's really cool.

if there is meaning to your choices, except that which you assign to it, you cannot know it. do as you please, do what feels right or don't. accepting everything may not lead to happiness, but, other than the necessary mental faculties, it is the only requirement for contentment.

I have a set of values:

• Be social
• Seek autonomy
• Give solidarity
• Live in community
• Be healthy
• Have a clean home
• Work is to support other values, it's not a value itself

And so on...

The choice i make is the one that aligns best with my values. If i have time to think that is. Otherwise my subconscious picks it's own weights.

There's a hierarchy to the values but they change in substance and position over time. That's by design. Humans grow and change.

Circularity and contradiction? That's fine. As long as it's aligned with my values I know I'm unlikely to regret it.

Hmm...let's put this in perspective. We live in a tiny dot flying around a cosmic sized flushing toilet bowl that is it self flying around a larger flushing toilet bowl... Both have centers that either melt everything and or stretch it til the atoms break apart...or both. We are direct descendants of life forms...not animals perhaps but life forms who appeared from random motion and electric volts and radiation in and around a primordial mix of random liquid shit. And we are the 1 second before midnight if the entire earth had been around for an entire day. In short we are nothing. Who cares if some guy wants tariffs on China while raping someone during a celebration for a new pope. However...if you lived here, your entire puny life trapped inside a calcium basket full of your own meat and guts with 8 other billion people in the same conditions, I would much rather it be a happy blip than a blip filled with and torture. And lots and lots of sex. If you're 21, my recommendation as a working professional who designs and builds really freaking cool gadgets is to go find someone to fuck pronto. And fuck. A lot. Use protection, don't have kids unless you want to. But just make love day and night. Once you turn 35 make some goals for the rest of your blip. Then spend the rest of your blip. Thru all, make your self happy and make others happy. Just help each other. It serves no one if you live the tiny puny piece of time pissed off and you piss off others.

If it makes me feel virtuous, I want to do it. If it makes me feel guilty, I don't want to do it. 'Right' or 'wrong' seem to be objective morality-ly loaded terms, though.

Don't be a dick. Try to stay out of the kinds of trouble that cause extra paperwork.

Don't be a dick.

Number one rule I have.

Be the person Captain Picard would want you to be.

I'd recommend reading Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do by Michael Sandell.

Also I haven't read it myself yet but it sounds like The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris would probably be of interest to you as well.

Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.

• Don’t be an asshole

• everyone just wants to be happy

• don’t be a burden to anyone

• look before crossing the streets

• always assume a bad driver has a reason for this behavior

• wipe front to back

• if you can do it right now, do it

• always assume everyone around you is smearier than you yourself

• don’t take the blame for everything, but offer to help fixing it

• if you’re serving anything, always take the different thing or the worst looking thing for yourself

Try to be as unlike the cuurent US administration as possible?

Golden Mean - a famous philosphy by Aristotle has been really been big part of my adult life. It's just incredibly handy and applicable to any situation.

Aristotle's Golden Mean is the idea that virtue lies between two extremes - excess and deficiency.

We even see this idea expressed in contemporary sciences and sociology concepts like economic diminishing returns etc. and it really applies to everything. The best parts of life are trully in the middle and if you believe in only one life focusing on extremes is unlikely to get you anywhere interesting unless you're very lucky/unlucky.

I really recommend "How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question" by Michael Schur who is one of the creators of The Good Place and he evaluates many popular ethics and world model views from a contemporary point of view and its really well done if you're interested in practical ethics.