kontra5
kontra5 t1_iquyq1k wrote
Reply to comment by Zaptruder in Utopia”: meaning ‘no place’; from Greek: οὐ (not’) and τόπος (‘place’) by Sphaerocypraea
I did not expect pedantry. There is quite a range in-between superficial and based on that (as I argued wrong) conclusion and pedantry. Feel free to let me know why you think one way or the other regarding, in this context of time travel, immersion into something significantly new, different (and weird and unknown) to result in first impression of utopia rather than the (again as I argued) likely opposite - dystopia.
kontra5 t1_iqugi05 wrote
Reply to comment by Zaptruder in Utopia”: meaning ‘no place’; from Greek: οὐ (not’) and τόπος (‘place’) by Sphaerocypraea
> Bring a caveman into 21st century society and he'll think it's utopia for a while. > > Bring a 21st century man into Star Trek society and he'll think its utopia too... at least for a while
No way. That's what you wish they would think. It heavily depends on which location of particular time they'd get exposed to, and even then, more likely the strangeness would (out of fear of unknown and strange that's innate) leave impression of dystopia. In any case it's very relative on many factors some of which I mentioned. Sorry to say your comment was not very thought out.
kontra5 t1_isnlgbs wrote
Reply to comment by Bookswinters in Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3
Preference for harm reduction? Harm is in practice defined in the eye of the beholder so it's not useful to talk about it as universal. On top of that once you add context and scrutinize it - it doesn't even hold water. Nobody will prefer living under a bell shielded as much as possible from any "harm" because then they would be the weakest. Suddenly there are obvious conditionals to this "preference for harm reduction." My point is the phrase is too vague and relative to be useful anchor of explanation unless contextualized with specific content and boundaries. Taleb's concept of antifragility comes to mind why this doesn't hold much weight without additional conditionals.
Why I seem pedantic or even petty about these distinctions? Because we could have seen in last decade term "harm" being used and abused for all sorts of ideologies to bully in changes into societies that otherwise people would never democratically agree upon under the pretense this is something universally good, almost like holy good - dogmatic and not to be questioned. And that's not good...