From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Fri May 12 2006 - 20:05:40 MDT
At 11:16 PM 5/12/2006 +0100, m.l.vere wrote:
>Crockners Rules
>
>I've been lurking for a while, and the one thing that has really struck me is
>that whilst a (largely commendable) near worship of rationality exists on the
>SL4 list, this has a huge blindspot. Everyone cleaves nearly unquestioningly
>to wider societies superstitious moralism.
>
>Why does anyone have morals, or believe that other people/sentients have
>intrisnic worth?
We evolved this way. You have to understand Hamilton's concept of
inclusive fitness, but genes have done better that cause us to consider the
value of copies of our genes in other people. It is a direct mathematic
relation. Most of our evolution was done in tribes or small bands where
the others around us were strongly related.
That's the origin. We tend to carry this over into the current world where
the people around us are far less related and we treat them better than
would be expected because of our legacy from the hunter-gatherer era.
Keith Henson
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