sorry, written by Waters not Gilmore, I know i know

Some of us? Most of us. Why watch insipid, uncreative, cut and paste productions?

I've got thirteen channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from ~ Gilmore

Face facts, classism breeds corruption which produces incompetency and this is exactly what we are seeing, a complete lack of creativity and quality. Like corporate food, corporate culture is empty of value, a waste of time and worse, manipulative and misleading. People are paying to be programmed by classist and authoritarian propaganda, 1984 indeed. Welcome to our corporatocracy.

I think a lot of this rests on misunderstandings of both intent and position, so let me clarify rather than trade accusations.

First, there was no ad hominem intended, nor any attempt to “proclaim victory.” Acknowledging that a discussion has gone off the rails is not an appeal to triumph, and pointing that out is not abuse. I’m perfectly comfortable with disagreement, including sustained disagreement, without needing a winner.

Second, the claim that ethics may be inherent to life was never meant as a claim of transcendent, immutable moral law, nor as a denial that ethical systems are articulated, refined, and formalized by humans. The point was narrower: that normativity does not emerge ex nihilo from ideology alone, but is grounded in features shared by living systems, such as vulnerability, interdependence, and the need to coordinate behavior. That grounding does not magically turn ethics into physics, but it does mean ethics is not *merely* an arbitrary human invention either.

On that note, biological adaptation was not being promoted to “cross-cultural moral truth.” Rather, it was offered as an explanation for why certain ethical intuitions recur across cultures without implying that they are empirically falsifiable in the same way scientific claims are. Moral disagreement and scientific disagreement are obviously different kinds of disagreement—but that difference doesn’t imply that morality is therefore content-free or entirely relative in practice.

As for public justification: the point isn’t that justification floats free of shared values, but that ethical claims aspire to reasons that can be offered to others, not just asserted as personal preference. That aspiration is itself part of what we mean by normativity. Norms don’t descend from natural law, but neither are they reducible to “anything goes.”

Finally, there’s no crusade here and no claim to absolute truth. Sharing values does not require believing they are metaphysically privileged, but neither does rejecting transcendence require treating them as interchangeable or purely aesthetic choices. Recognizing some values as better justified than others is compatible with fallibilism and openness.

If this line of discussion feels tedious, that’s fair, we can leave it there. But disagreement on meta-ethics doesn’t require imputing motives, nor does it hinge on who is trying to “win.”

I think a lot of this rests on misunderstandings of both intent and position, so let me clarify rather than trade accusations.

First, there was no ad hominem intended, nor any attempt to “proclaim victory.” Acknowledging that a discussion has gone off the rails is not an appeal to triumph, and pointing that out is not abuse. I’m perfectly comfortable with disagreement, including sustained disagreement, without needing a winner.

Second, the claim that ethics may be inherent to life was never meant as a claim of transcendent, immutable moral law, nor as a denial that ethical systems are articulated, refined, and formalized by humans. The point was narrower: that normativity does not emerge ex nihilo from ideology alone, but is grounded in features shared by living systems, such as vulnerability, interdependence, and the need to coordinate behavior. That grounding does not magically turn ethics into physics, but it does mean ethics is not *merely* an arbitrary human invention either.

On that note, biological adaptation was not being promoted to “cross-cultural moral truth.” Rather, it was offered as an explanation for why certain ethical intuitions recur across cultures without implying that they are empirically falsifiable in the same way scientific claims are. Moral disagreement and scientific disagreement are obviously different kinds of disagreement, but that difference doesn’t imply that morality is therefore content-free or entirely relative in practice.

As for public justification: the point isn’t that justification floats free of shared values, but that ethical claims aspire to reasons that can be offered to others, not just asserted as personal preference. That aspiration is itself part of what we mean by normativity. Norms don’t descend from natural law, but neither are they reducible to “anything goes.”

Finally, there’s no crusade here and no claim to absolute truth. Sharing values does not require believing they are metaphysically privileged, but neither does rejecting transcendence require treating them as interchangeable or purely aesthetic choices. Recognizing some values as better justified than others is compatible with fallibilism and openness.

If this line of discussion feels tedious, that’s fair, we can leave it there. But disagreement on meta-ethics doesn’t require imputing motives, nor does it hinge on who is trying to “win.”

Your need to be insulting and abusive undercuts your attempt to argue, it looks if you can't win an argument, you resort to trolling. Let's discuss your response in order to illustrate this.

First, acknowledging that ethics is not merely “formal, discursive moral theories” but something deeper already undermines the claim that ethics is *only* a human construct. If ethical capacities predate theory, then moral reasoning is not inventing ethics from nothing; it is attempting to *discover, refine, and justify* norms grounded in shared human conditions. That matters, because it means ethical evaluation is not reducible to personal preference.

Second, the claim that moral justification can “only apply to yourself” is incoherent. Justification, by definition, is public-facing: reasons are meant to be assessable by others. If a moral claim cannot, even in principle, apply beyond the individual, it ceases to be ethics and collapses into taste or habit. Saying “this is justified, but only for me” strips the word *justified* of meaning.

Third, appealing to the fact that “moral relativism is how humans work” confuses *description* with *normativity*. Humans also reason poorly, hold contradictions, and rationalize self-interest, yet no one concludes that logic, consistency, or truth are therefore relative. Ethics is not a census of how people behave; it is an evaluative practice that distinguishes better and worse reasons for action. Moral disagreement no more proves relativism than scientific disagreement proves there is no physical reality.

Finally, the position quietly assumes what it must prove: that because people disagree about values, no cross-context moral claims can be warranted. But many ethical constraints are precisely those that survive perspective-shifting, reciprocity, non-arbitrary exclusion, proportionality, and the moral standing of persons. These are not “moral laws” imposed from above; they are conclusions that follow from shared capacities like agency, vulnerability, and the ability to suffer. Rejecting them requires special pleading, not neutrality.

In short, your reply retreats from ethics as justification into ethics as sociology, then treats that retreat as a victory. Moral relativism may describe how humans often behave, but it does not explain, let alone justify, why any belief should be treated as ethically equivalent to any other. Nor does it justify unethical behavior on the part of those in power, indeed it clearly shows them to be the depraved and morally bankrupt people that they are.

Your reply rests on several debatable premises that don’t actually hold once ethics is examined more carefully.

First, it draws too sharp a line between ethical behavior and ethical reasoning. While it’s true that non-human animals do not construct formal, discursive moral theories, that does not mean ethics itself is purely a human invention. Many core ethical capacities—empathy, fairness, reciprocity, norm enforcement, and punishment of defectors—are well documented in social animals (primates, cetaceans, corvids). What humans add is abstraction and codification, not the substance of morality itself. Calling ethics “the search for a rational framework” describes moral philosophy, not ethics as such. Ethics precedes philosophy; it is lived before it is theorized.

Second, the argument conflates having an ethical system with that system being ethically valid. Saying “Nazis had ethics too” commits a category error. An internally consistent norm system grounded in shared beliefs does not automatically qualify as an ethical framework in any meaningful sense. Most ethical traditions—including Aristotle, Cicero, Kant, natural law theory, and modern human rights ethics—explicitly distinguish between mere social norms and morally justified norms. Genocidal ideologies fail basic ethical criteria such as universality, reciprocity, proportionality, and the moral standing of persons. Calling them “ethical” empties the word of all evaluative content and reduces it to “whatever a group believes,” which is moral relativism by definition, not a neutral observation.

Third, your claim that ethics are always and irreducibly subjective does not follow from the fact of moral disagreement. Disagreement exists in science and logic as well, yet this does not imply that truth “simply doesn’t exist” in those domains. Ethical realism does not require certainty or absolutism; it requires only that some moral claims can be better or worse justified than others. The existence of cross-cultural moral convergence—prohibitions on murder, theft, betrayal, and arbitrary cruelty—strongly suggests constraints on viable ethical systems that are not merely subjective preference.

Fourth, the appeal to “imposition” and “coercion” misrepresents how ethical universals function. Rejecting slavery, torture, or genocide as unethical is not the same as asserting one’s personal values as absolute truth. It is an inference drawn from shared human capacities (suffering, agency, vulnerability) and the logical inconsistency of granting moral standing selectively. The Nazi example actually undermines the author’s position: Nazism required coercion and violence precisely because its claims could not survive ethical scrutiny or reciprocal justification.

Besides, you lost this argument when you sank that low, because clearly these upper class people are our new Nazis.

Honestly, what i see is most science is someone doing make work and publishing bs so they can keep their grant and their title. As long as they are tenured and publish, they can enjoy a prestigious free ride, that is what science is about these days.

Those days are gone and we need to move on. Science without ethics is how we got into this mess and all the unethical overly-affluent 'scientists' are never going to solve our problems. One of which is how corrupt science and academia have become. Sadly, there no room for real science when science is only about making the big bucks and having a prestigious position, clearly what we call science has become corrupted and moribund.

classism produces corruption which breeds incompetency, greed is clearly evil, yet we put greedy people on a pedestal

we are all getting what we deserve for letting evil people rule over us

people get the governments we deserve and we don't deserve good things because we are an irresponsible and unethical peoples

look around with honest eyes and tell me it isn't so

we should clean up our own mess before being distracted by the messes of others, let the Russians deal with Russia, that's called self-determination

typical red baiting, just saying

Sorry but I disagree, ethics are inherent to life itself, even lower animals know how to show care and affection

typical egocentrism and a lack of understanding of how fundamental ethics are to quality of life, try reading some Pirsig as in Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle maintenance for an explanation of this. Civilizations thrive and grow because they are ethical and effective, once corruption sets in, civilizations rot from the top down.

These upper class people are addicted to power and they are pathologically selfish, they will continue to hoard capital until our economy collapses once again. Economic hoarding has destroyed many civilizations. We'll just be another one in a long line. This is nothing new, indeed, Cicero thousands of years ago viewed greed, whether for money or power, as the root of all injustice and a threat to both individual virtue and the stability of the republic. He argued that greed corrupts moral judgment, undermines social harmony, and leads to tyranny. In his speeches, such as Against Verres, he condemned public officials like Verres for systematic looting, portraying their actions as a complete lack of self-control and a betrayal of public trust. So clearly we can see nothing has changed and that those in power are as evil now as they were back then.

My point remains valid, most transnational corporations have their own private AIs.

AI isn't the problem, all the classism and corruption are our real problems.

All the unethical upper class people are wrecking everything for everybody and soon they'll destroy this civilization as they have many others. Greed is often our downfall.

real firms have private models

sadly everyone is going to pay dearly for the unethical actions of the upper class

ethics are inherent to both intelligence and development

what we have here is degradation and corruption

all the rhetoric in the world won't excuse all the evil and the greed that's wrecking everything for everybody

this current situation is exactly what evil looks like, it's obvious that rich and powerful unethical people are wrecking everything for everybody, this is what crime is

while it's true history carries on, at what cost? why should we allow evil to overcome all the good we have done

shame on us all, what a complete disgrace

(shame on you slashdot ownership for ending anonymity, typical fascists.)