Saturday, January 26, 2019

Our moral beliefs need to be updated

Just a quick post before I zoom off to go Go-Karting.

I think our iron held moral beliefs in justice, equality and fairness needs to be updated in the 21st century. Just like how countries laws and tax systems are struggling to keep up with an increasingly technical, flexible and global economy, I think our moral beliefs will also come under pressure.

Consider a simple moral statement like 'everyone has the right to choose what they do with their body'. I suspect every non religious person would probably agree this is a sound moral value to live by. However, I think moral statements like this become increasingly more difficult to defend in light of technological advancements which will force us to come to grips with subtle contradictions. The most obvious challenge to this moral statement is vaccines. Individuals choosing not to vaccinate their children or themselves aren't just harming their children or themselves, they're harming others around them through the potential risk of spreading a contagious disease. The same goes with smoking, drugs, abortion etc. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, the choice of what we do with our bodies will become more and more the concern of humanity as a whole. This is a simple example, but I think the problem goes much deeper. What if a countries CO2 emissions disproportionately affect another countries weather? What if one country builds a dam blocking water used for agriculture in a neighboring country? These are problems we're already witnessing and trying to solve. The only solution is to completely do away with our old fashioned iron held moral beliefs and iterate to a new moral code built on maximizing well being. And once technology shows problems with the new moral code, then we will have to iterate once more. I'm worried that if we don't precisely engineer how these moral values change, then they will be changed for us by the invisible hand of capitalism.

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