Those guys also have an outsized influence over what someone would have to do to be seen as virtuous. The guy being pelted with rotten vegetables and publicly executed for opposing them? Not seen as virtuous. The guy running a church that does some good things but in a way that reinforces their power? Seen as virtuous.
Even if people are overall good, that doesn’t mean they can translate that into successfully coordinating to come to correct collective agreement about complicated problems and be immune to elaborate efforts to distort their beliefs in particular directions. If you think, here is what people are saying about what I should do, so that must be an accurate expression of their combined good intentions, well no, it isn’t, because that isn’t something that is easily achieved by default.
I assure you the church has always had enemies, as have the many nations throughout history, and more importantly they had less control over public sentiment than they had over how history was written.
But the point is that you or Zuckerberg don’t decide fuck all on morality, only the majority can, and that has always been true even as morality has changed, and furthermore that he literally also agreed with that majority that it was Virtuous.
It’s clear we very much disagree whether morality is derived from or aligned with the judgment of the public. But surely you can understand that such disagreement exists, and that your perspective on this isn’t held by everyone? If someone talks about virtue, you can’t assume they are talking about the will of the majority, and you can’t infer that a statement is contradictory based on the assumption that the ‘virtue’ refers to the will of the majority, because that’s just your opinion and probably not what they mean. I bet your opinion on this isn’t even shared by most people.
Those guys also have an outsized influence over what someone would have to do to be seen as virtuous. The guy being pelted with rotten vegetables and publicly executed for opposing them? Not seen as virtuous. The guy running a church that does some good things but in a way that reinforces their power? Seen as virtuous.
Even if people are overall good, that doesn’t mean they can translate that into successfully coordinating to come to correct collective agreement about complicated problems and be immune to elaborate efforts to distort their beliefs in particular directions. If you think, here is what people are saying about what I should do, so that must be an accurate expression of their combined good intentions, well no, it isn’t, because that isn’t something that is easily achieved by default.
I assure you the church has always had enemies, as have the many nations throughout history, and more importantly they had less control over public sentiment than they had over how history was written.
But the point is that you or Zuckerberg don’t decide fuck all on morality, only the majority can, and that has always been true even as morality has changed, and furthermore that he literally also agreed with that majority that it was Virtuous.
It’s clear we very much disagree whether morality is derived from or aligned with the judgment of the public. But surely you can understand that such disagreement exists, and that your perspective on this isn’t held by everyone? If someone talks about virtue, you can’t assume they are talking about the will of the majority, and you can’t infer that a statement is contradictory based on the assumption that the ‘virtue’ refers to the will of the majority, because that’s just your opinion and probably not what they mean. I bet your opinion on this isn’t even shared by most people.