Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to I can accept that.

Anything's OK as long as no one gets hurt.
Mary Anne — (archived)

A less elegant restatement of the Golden Rule, with a touch of fortune-telling thrown in.

We can't know what will hurt someone else, save certain obvious examples: murder, physical injury, theft, slander (theft of reputation) and other damaging lies, and conspiracy to commit any of these. To determine what outside of this is unacceptable to the person on the receiving end is tantamount to mindreading. Mindreading can't enter into a definition of morality; it's outside of our common abilities.

We can only know how we would like to be treated. We can extend that to others only based on our own experience. That's a difficult enough task as it is.

If everyone genuinely practiced the Golden Rule to the best of his or her ability every day, we wouldn't need to worry so much about the butterfly's wing effect on people in distant places, or people down the street, because the mitigating effects of the Golden Rule would make their lives less hurtful in general.

Morality is more about intent, effort and practice, and less about actual results. We have the law to deal with bad results and differences of opinion. But I stray into ethics.

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