This is news to me

–Average waiter/waitress in Europe

It’s impossible to be perfect, and virtue will be disregarded at times, but I think it’s not that difficult to be above the threshold we all naturally understand

This is a practical mindset to have but allow me to say more about where I think the difficulty lies. 1) We commonly do immoral things. 2) The right thing to do isn’t always clear. Let’s consider each in turn.

1. Many practices are so commonplace in our time that we no longer feel their moral implications: even when we know that the action is wrong! For example, I eat meat that comes from factory farmed animals; I know that the animals are essentially being tortured, but it’s easy to let price and gustatory pleasure outweigh the moral considerations because everyone else is doing the same. Similarly, I know that the minerals (e.g., cobalt) used to build my cellphone come from literal slave labor of miners in the Congo. Yet instead of buying a Fair Phone, I bought the cheapest phone that served my own needs.

2. There are also cases in which our virtues come into conflict. In such cases, the right action to take is not always so straight-forward. For example, is it okay to tell my wife a white lie if I know it makes her feel better? (Deontologists like Immanuel Kant would emphatically answer “no”.) Or, if I have a set amount of money to donate, should I give the money to a random unhoused person, donate the money to someone (who I cannot see) in an even worse position in a poorer country, or give the money to a friend/family? Moral realists (e.g., virtue ethicists, deontologists, consequentialists) all agree that there are definitive answers to these questions, even though they will disagree on what the actual answers are.

To be a morally virtuous persons, it seems you have to be willing to go against the common practices of your own time and you must also be knowledgeable enough to make correct moral judgements. This is a tall order for most of us to achieve.

Ha! In a few ways, yes.

Although philosophers who embrace moral realism will have different views, my takeaway is that it is much harder to be a virtuous moral agent than the layperson assumes.

That said, if I find that a person often puts their own interests above those of everyone else, this is a good indication of questionable character.

Time to go clean the deep fridge

But doesn’t the generation ship / cryogenic technology / nuclear technology make intergalactic travel possible (albeit very slow)?

Me, trying not to write a political comment on a non-political question.

I’d guess we’re either going to reach futuristic Star Trek communism or a dystopian world-wide techno-feudalism.

And also how they no longer care about home users because their near monopoly on office spaces/businesses.

Alright kids, time to shrink down and head into enemy territory

Is it just me or does cereal not taste the same as when I was a kid?

Endurantists arguing that the salient identity condition is a continuous causal history:

More reading for anyone interested: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/temporal-parts/

Trains over planes all day

Priming biases the results. Top-down processing and all that.

Hijacking this comment for a PSA; We are currently in the midst of a mass extinction event; many more plant, animal, and insect species are on the brink of extinction than normal. Scientists also estimate that forty-one percent of ecosystems are on the verge of collapse. Climate change, human encroachment, pollution, hunting, etc. have done a number on the environment.

Didn’t know Plex could handle music libraries

he jus like me fr