Gizmodo on mind uploading, featuring Anders Sandberg

[Drashner1]

A majority of people could decide that seeing homosexual couples in public makes them feel bad and decide to prohibit it.

Not sure what part of the planet you call home, but this has already happened multiple times in multiple countries (including my own) and continues in many countries to this day. My country has recently taken steps against this prohibition, much to the annoyance of a fair number of people, who continue to complain about it. Their upset and pain...amuses me

Now you could say that whether we allow people to act in accordance with their sexual orientation or not is an arbitrary decision that has nothing to do with good or evil, but I would argue that prohibiting this is in fact morally unacceptable, as it causes pointless suffering while not serving the public good in any meaningful way. I don't think you can justify abuses of human rights on the grounds that there's no universal standard that applies in every situation.

As a gay man I'm happy that you feel this way. However, moving beyond my (admittedly self-interested) emotions on the matter, the fact that you're trying to make an argument for the existence of good, evil, and morality by starting from an assumption that they exist doesn't really convince me (sorry).

Try formulating the argument with no reference to or use of the words and see what you come up with.

On a somewhat different note - would now be a bad time to mention that I classify 'human rights' or 'rights' in general as made up/imaginary concepts as well?

True, but this does not mean that evil does not exist, just that what constitues evil varies depending on the circumstances. There are an enormous variety of different harms that can befall a person, whether that constitutes injury, humiliation, financial loss or death, and there's no reason why we should allow people to inflict these harms on each other without good cause. I don't accept that any person can decide that it's fine for them to hurt whoever they want, just because there isn't an absolute standard of evil that you can point to like it's one of the laws of physics.

So something can be 'evil' in one set of circumstances and 'good' in another? That seems a bit...subjective and imaginary.

I agree there are many different types of harm that can befall a person, but I don't see what that has to do with the question of whether or not good or evil exist.

I would say that there are various reasons why allowing people to harm each other at will would probably result in more negative consequences than positive ones, whether to myself or the society I live in (which would devolve back to negative consequences for me). But I don't see any value in muddying the waters with terms/concepts like 'evil' though. Or why the concept of 'evil' is even really necessary in this case.

More specifically, I suppose that the concept of 'evil' can be used as a memetic tool for manipulating people to get them to behave in a desired manner, but the LOE and potential unanticipated long term side effects generally make me feel it's more work than it's worth.

Todd