Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I wouldn't get my hopes up. The number of times I've seen people, even here, equate legality and morality is frightening.



> I wouldn't get my hopes up. The number of times I've seen people, even here, equate legality and morality is frightening.

I have literally never seen anyone here argue that "murder and genocide isn't morally wrong if it is legally right".

Are you sure you aren't equivocating "I don't support $FOO political position" with "I support murder and genocide"?

Because I have seen a number of people argue that some aspect of their personal moral code, which isn't currently written into law, should be written into law and enforced on the rest of the people who don't have that moral code.


No, I wasn't even thinking of political positions. I'm not trying to dog-whistle around red-tribe/blue-tribe signaling, I actually mean what I said. I was in a comment thread some time ago about the ethics of self-driving cars. Another user believed that they should base the decisions of who to save on the cultural mores, history, and laws of the region where they are sold. On the one hand, it's hard to see a business doing otherwise. On the other, that's exactly how we get Zyklon B and legal slavery in the third world.

I was discussing the trolley problem with a lawyer a few years ago, and her conclusion to the dilemma, no joke, was literally "It depends if I would be legally culpable in the country I'm in." Which is a very legalistic, and utterly amoral answer.


My apologies, I read your comment more uncharitably than you intended.

> Another user believed that they should base the decisions of who to save on the cultural mores, history, and laws of the region where they are sold.

This brings up a different issue: the product will then be considered amoral in the particular region that it is deployed in. That's the problem with using "morals" as a yardstick - it's too subjective because every culture has their own set of morals, and these morals change over time anyway.

For a product sold in multiple regions, it makes sense to follow the cultural mores of that region. If you don't like their morals, don't do business with them.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: