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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 20, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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This isn't the first time I'm seeing this 'moral disgust / aesthetics' dismissal in this kind of space, and it's nothing more than the intersection between a strawman, question begging, and isolated demand for rigor.

Are you interested in following the causal logic of an outcomes and effects argument? Then ask that plainly. Are you interested in hearing someone defend the issue deontologically? Then ask that plainly Are you're really intereted in someone's basic beliefs in their moral framework? Then why conveniently begin the discussion, dismissively, with an issue you disagree with.

All moral arguments will ultimately fall into essentially 1 of 4 categories, beneath the level of basic beleifs: theological / deist, arbitrary nihilism, aesthetic, or motivated self interest.

Even if you are Mr. Consequentialist, you eventually have to argue 'why' the good outcome deserves the term 'good', and you have one of the four options to pick from above. And all four of these can arguably collapse into the others (or lack of other).

"Ha! Your perception of good and bad is based on 'aesthetics'!" Isn't quite the trump one might thing it is.

theological / deist, arbitrary nihilism, aesthetic, or motivated self interest.

What about group interest? Even if I'm selfish enough to prefer "I get to steal stuff and my targets get to suck it" as a moral rule, I obviously can't negotiate for that, and "nobody gets to steal stuff" is a much better Schelling point for me than "everybody gets to steal stuff". Technically "nobody gets to steal stuff" is still motivated by self-interest, since I'm picking what's better for me among realistic alternatives, but it still seems like it belongs in a different category than the "I get to steal stuff" rule.

And all four of these can arguably collapse into the others

Though this still seems true, for all five of these. In particular in this context, we can have evolved to feel disgust at things we expect to violate group interests, and we can have negotiated group interests that include effort to avoid triggering group members' innate disgust reactions.

I'm not sure I have enough of this context, though. I don't know who any of these people are, and when I google nolan "pizza party podcast" fetish the top video hit is "The DIAPER FETISH SONIC Special", which appears to open with the "Superfuckers" theme song. This is the show where "most of the fans of the podcast were children"? Perhaps I'm not giving it a fair shake, closing that window 10 seconds after clicking the Youtube link, but frankly I'm just hoping that Google and Youtube respect my incognito window and don't corrupt future search results or algorithm recommendations.

I'll start by saying I'm no philosopher. But as you describe since, these can all collapse into eachother (in postive or negative formulation), I don't see why you couldn't have five. I'm going to flippantly call these all different faces of "The Axiom", some starting point of the good that's self-justifying in some way.

That said, I was personally thinking of group interest as essentially in terms of self-interest. Where I was going with self-interest was "this moral / value proposition" isn't based on some extrinsic good, but on what outcome I prefer. So if one thinks that said given moral proposition isn't based on some theistic derivation, isn't arbitrary, isn't derived from some evo-psych or naturalistic attraction, then it's motivated self-interest.

That said, again, I see no reason, this couldn't be expanded out as a fifth face.

I appreciate your response and aspire to your level of rationalism. I'd say I'm most interested in following the causal logic of an outcomes and effects argument, though I wouldn't mind the other three.