On Mon, Apr 16, 2001 at 10:24:53AM -0700, J. R. Molloy wrote:
> Anders Sandberg wrote,
> > I have heard some people say that a drug
> > that has no side effects and no addiction risk would still be bad and
> > ought to be stopped, likely because some anti-hedonistic prejudice. How
> > do we handle this kind of situation? I think the best is to work for a
> > society where pluralism is accepted, and where most people can deal with
> > that other people do not necessarily share their ethics.
>
> That probably sounds good in Sweden, where you don't have the level of
> diversity found in North America. However, pluralism and politically correct
> tolerance has resulted in an unexpected consequence in that this position has
> no tolerance for advocates of unification and objective morality.
The big question is, can you live in the same society as relativists, or
do you have to fight them? I take the classical liberal stance that even
when plenty of ethical systems and views are erroneous, it would be
morally wrong to repress them - even if you believe in an objective
morality you better admit to yourself that you might be mistaken about
things, and if you force your views on others you might be perpetuating
an ethical outrage. The same of course goes for everybody else, and
hence a policy of tolerance is the best option. This doesn't mean you
have to stop questioning things, testing whether ethical systems hold up
or asking uncomfortable questions to people. Political correctness is
not really tolerant of this.
As for diversity, at least Stockholm is rapidly approaching the
diversity I have seen in my visits to the states. In fact, Stockholm is
almost becoming a different country from Sweden - which might actually
be a return to its old status as a foreign city :-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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