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I agree with most of what you say here. Probably I shouldn't have brought up divergence from verbalized rules; that's a different conversation.
I'm not talking about what people do when they don't expect to get caught. I think people blatantly lie and objectify all the time with no social sanction. Maybe they'd be in trouble if you called them on it, but so would you, for bringing it to the verbal sphere.
No, being normal is not inherently moral, but it suggests that there are other factors to weigh against the lying and the objectification, like with the bus driver. (It suggests it to me, but I feel like there's a missing step I can't verbalize here.)
Thanks for that clarification!
morals/ethics: I probably read your definition of social acceptability in terms of ethics backwards.
I think that you're too trusting of society's verbalization of morality and that this is rather different from what people actually accept. This is similar to the discussion of lying. It also reminds me of Michael Vassar's comment about homosexuality. Even if generally accepted ethics deviate from generally verbalized ethics, it's not clear what to choose.
If you're saying that ethics is the conventional wisdom about true morality, then (1) it could be wrong and (2) even if it's right, we have the right to ask for more detail: an appeal to authority can answer "what?" but not "why?"
Alternatively, you might be distinguishing between "morality" meaning indivisible goodness and "ethics" meaning the accepted rules of society, which we hope promote morality.
If so, are you saying that all these examples are immoral, but some are ethical? and we shouldn't worry about the harm we do by objectifying the bus driver because he knows its coming and has accepted it? (that the means justify the ends)
But in comment xxx, you said that an important attribute in distinguishing examples was that "it's more socially acceptable," which I read as pretty close to "natural." Not the same "natural" as above, but deriving ought from is.
I find this a very disturbing comment.
Why do you invoke Alicorn? Why not just "that's beyond the pale as far as I'm concerned"?
This is by far the strongest one of a very few comments on this thread (and no prior threads) that make me think Roko is right about cliques.
In my experience, demands for qualifications and disclaimers are almost always a way to hold different sides to different standards (not that this is hypocrisy, per se).
I can't delete my account, either.
Is account deletion supposed to delete your old posts? Why do you want that?