Hate3.

Note 1: As I said in the previous reply, this is rather for the importance of related topics and not so much the origin of the discussion.

Even when I say half-joking that I hate DMC4 sometimes, it's technically true. And I don't consider it optimal, but it's obviously not very transcendent to hate DMC4 or DmC passively compared to much more relevant issues.

Note 2: This reply is mainly directed at DK, but I intentionally wrote about extra subtopics that he doesn't necessarily disagree with. Because I want others like Turtle to read it as well. What I am basically saying is: don't read this as if I were arguing with DK in every point. It's more an essay about ethics that has to do with a past conversation than an argument or discussion (at least for me).

Emotions aren't absolutely independent from choices.

Emotions are rarely pure. And they are usually still attached to morality in both directions: they can influence choices, and choices can influence emotions.

In the best case, an emotional reaction such as the mentioned fear in the very first encounter with a bear is very automatic with pretty good independence from cognitive structures, yet, even then, it's possible to make choices that will affect the emotional reaction in a second encounter (assuming you are still alive). Even before the first one you could make choices that can influence the first emotional reaction (like educating yourself as much as possible about the best ways to handle an encounter with a bear, trying to walk always with someone more experienced, etc.). I also mentioned examples like astronauts, firemen, surgeons, etc.; where human beings can modulate an emotional reaction such as fear. And I didn't make radical examples with trained experts because it only happens in such cases, but because it's easier to see it. It actually happens constantly, as one is more prone to feel anger in certain situations or fear, depending on racial prejudices, beliefs, opinions and cognitive structures overall.

In other words, variables that can be influenced choosing differently (from educating yourself to questioning your own beliefs). And hate isn't an exception (it's also not even an emotion, but a feeling, like I explained in previous replies).

To reply to the concept of irrelevant acts and emotions (which are still influenced by acts) in terms of morality, as long as no other person is affected (not realistic, but let's consider it's the case) I will suggest another a question that is maybe one of the most radical examples...

Is suicide amoral, moral or immoral? Assuming it doesn't affect anybody else (like leaving your own child knowing nobody else would take care of him or her) and no other people are hurt in any way in the process.

You can answer in your next reply if you want. I will explain my own answer at the end after some other explanations.

Epistemology and Ethics.

(This is a rough summary because these topics would require much more space/text).

If we try to interpret our existence, there are 2 basic factors that are critical for any further development:

1) We are conscious processors of information. We have mechanisms to sense, perceive and analyze info. They are so complex that there isn't only processing of certain aspects of reality; we even create realities. This is partly explained in the text about social norms. But as more typical and obvious example, something like beauty doesn't exist intrinsically in any object if it's not perceived by at least one of us.

This is related to epistemology. Not in the traditional sense of the definition, but considering it as (also) individual strategies to process information and build knowledge.

2) We are present and interactive elements in the universe. Which means that we aren't mere observers of events. We are part of the events and interact with other elements in the flux of causality (even if we understand only a fraction of it in a not necessarily correct way), which (because of consciousness) implies choices.

This is related to ethics. Which would be strategies to make the most adequate/right choices. Right ones being called moral (under the criterion of concrete ethics), and wrong ones immoral.

Before one simply starts to perceive and choose, a coherent step would be to consider which are the default patterns to do both, and why. In other words: the default ethics and epistemology. Because being able to perceive and choose doesn't mean it's in the most optimal way by default. If we are physical units or elements, then we have a design, and if we have a design, the design can have a default objective that isn't necessarily what we could consider the most adequate ultimate goal (the sense of life/existence).

And the most probable default objective of our design is survivor. However, not in a popular and oversimplified sense, but trying to understand all its nuances and complexity.

For example:

- The tendency to a confirmationistic processing and the apparent limits of our operative memory are probably related to an optimization of our resources and energy.

- Prejudices help to make quicker reactions.

- Jealousy and envy can encourage competition, which may improve selection.

(Very oversimplified examples to not make it even longer).

All these examples have probably to do with the default objective of our design. But without forgetting that the context in which our design evolved was very different.

Currently the problem aren't resources or energy, and it's much more systematically efficient to be open-minded, to keep prejudices low and merely as very flexible references, minimize jealousy and envy, etc.

My ethics would be based on the optimization of universality and base freedom.

The former means that actions will be more moral the more extrapolatable they are for the benefit of the whole collective and context (from different social groups and societies to our planet).

With simplistic examples this is very obvious. The cliché one: killing isn't universable, because you can't extrapolate it, as almost everybody would end up dead.

Nuclear disarmament will never happen if every single country keeps nuclear weapons for protection.

Someone has to be the first one or we could find another method for a progressive disarmament.

Same goes with guns... If everybody thinks: it would be nice to have a world free of lethal guns, but if I don't use one, maybe others will attack me... So I will keep it...

Then obviously that world will never happen. I know this sounds condescending and it oversimplifies the situation. It's to illustrate the concept (and there is the obvious option of non-lethal weapons before a definitive disarmament and whatnot).

Universality becomes more complex and harder to analyze the more subtle is the situation, especially when interacting with the base freedom criterion and epistemology. It also becomes hard to establish what is a benefit.

Explaining the base freedom criterion itself:

By default our freedom is constricted by our design. Our actions will tend to default objectives and patterns because of this. Consider the examples above like prejudices or envy.

Our default processing (or default epistemology) and default ethics are related to the mentioned tendency to confirmationism and social norms as base to act and choose. Explained in the respective entry in Spanish. Most actions are either automatized from absorbed constructive norms (even if each person is a unique combination) or very conditioned by them.

This means that if we were born in any other context/social-historic moment, we would choose differently only because of that. While optimized ethics should be above a contextual bias (which is not the same as not keeping in mind the context).

If the base freedom is constricted by default by our design and context, its optimization to expand it will be precisely based on understanding our design (and context) as much and as well as possible first. Before even choosing.

The objective is to minimize the bias in our choices, along with what we should consider moral, and even create choices that weren't perceived as alternatives in the first place.

Some simplified examples:

If you understand how your memory works, you have a better chance to choose strategies to optimize it and minimize mnemonic bias... If you understand how your emotional reactions work, you have a better chance to apply them in a more logical and consistent way... If you understand your own anxiety, depression, etc., you have a better chance to act accordingly... If you understand your default patterns to love, how they are conditioned by your context and normative construct, etc., you have a higher chance to choose a better way to love. Or at least modulate your default way to love.

Other Ethics and Subjectivity.

One can always say these are my ethics, and there are other ethics. Because ethics are ultimately subjective.

True.

But as I have explained in the first entry and in the entry about the Style Meter, everything is in absolute terms subjective. Even science, as it's attached to philosophy when designing the scientific method, interpreting results/data and whatnot.

What matters is how consistent are different ethics compared to each other under the most coherent premises, considering available evidence and types of analysis, etc.

The taste of an apple is subjective, but that doesn't mean one can't analyze the variables related to taste, like the content of the apple in the form of fructose and other chemicals that affect the receptors in our tongue.

The conclusions from such analysis will also be ultimately subjective. The scientific method simply helps to optimize the consistency of the conclusions.

There are situations where we enjoy the variety of interpretations and it's not even that relevant to understand the different tendencies to perceive something in different ways. Like in art. As I said in the entry about the Style Meter, what matters in the analysis of stylishness is to be able to pick relevant variables, but there is something positive and even beautiful in the fact that each one of us can perceive a combo or freestyle clip slightly differently because of the irrelevant ones.

Same goes for music, a story, a painting, etc.

Ethics are just a very different topic, and their analysis should be focused on consistency and coherence. The property of being subjective doesn't contradict this. They can and should still be analyzed.

This is why moral relativism is absolute nonsense. You can't use it to justify this atrocity, for example:

The fact that most people internalize default ethics based or at least very conditioned by their immediate and closest social contexts doesn't mean their ethics can't be criticized. The flaw of ethics that consider this art and moral in some parts of Spain is obvious and can be argumented when compared with other ethics that don't support nonsensical suffering of other sentient beings.

The cultural context in Spain doesn't justify it, or ethics being subjective. In the same way one can't justify cultures where women, homosexuals or other groups are demeaned or belittled.

In any case one can be more understanding with people who didn't get the necessary stimuli to choose something else in different cultural contexts. Analogously to the cliché: some of us could have been nazis if we were born as German folks in nazi Germany. But that doesn't mean the choices themselves aren't still wrong under better and more complex ethics. Regardless of the cultural context.

(Technically it wouldn't be us because we are obviously the product of a concrete sequence of stimuli interacting with genes; it's just to illustrate my point).

Amorality and Terminology.

Where there is choice, there are ethics. This terminology is simply the most consistent way to look at strategies to choose.

The type of argument if I burp, I burp, dude; not everything is about ethics is nonsensical (not saying you or anybody close to me has used it). In this example, a partially controllable physiological reaction is simply in a range of acceptable actions.

But the fact that some choices are obvious or in a wide range of acceptable options doesn't mean they aren't accessible for an active conscious change. And ironically, even something as silly as burping is still perceived as wrong in certain social contexts if it's done loudly (under common default ethics).

There are many actions that are simply in the range of what's acceptable (which is still moral) in a daily routine. At least under normative ethics. That doesn't mean they are outside ethics; they just don't need an ethical analysis for most people. It doesn't matter if you choose a red T-Shirt or a blue one to go to school or to go to work. Both are acceptable, but you could still spontaneously analyze the choice if you wanted to.

We always have the option to break the routine and automatisms. For example, you can walk every day to work and pass by a homeless man or woman. You aren't being amoral for acting like if that person doesn't exist.

An imperfect dissection of options:

1) You walk and don't help because it's perceived as acceptable normatively. Almost nobody else does it and it's a constructively internalized automatism (norm).  -> Moral under default ethics. It seems right if nobody else does it, and it's built in you. The content of the norm can integrate stuff like: "he or she lives like that because he wants to"; "he or she is just a drug addict"; "he would spend the money in alcohol". Even though the most of the times the content of the norm isn't really  reproduced, and you really just walk by thinking in something else.

A common variation of that norm is to just give that person at least a few coins. -> Moral under default ethics again.

2) You walk and don't help yet because you aren't sure what would be the best or most appropriate. You see the situation everyday and research about different options, but no option seems really viable. At least for you.

Here you are technically choosing to do a step to help. You research and think about the topic, even if you aren't reaching a conclusion. -> The step itself is moral under your ethics, and I wouldn't be against calling the whole situation in itself moral dilemma. Even though I consider more precise to dissect it all in steps from a whole process.

3) You walk and don't help despite thinking you should do it under your ethics. Because of laziness or whatever. -> Immoral.

4) After a proper evaluation, you don't consider you are prepared to help and it's not your job. You try to make others (more prepared than you) conscious about it or you plainly have to give up on the issue. It can also be because you have yourself significant problems and it's not a priority. -> Moral, since it's acceptable under your own criterion (ethics).

We could dig more into the dissection with the immoral options where we trick ourselves to consider them moral to avoid a cognitive dissonance. Like knowing you could do something constructive under your ethics, but you try to think that you can't really do much/it wouldn't really help.

What really matters is that in all the options the event is accessible to some criterion. Even when it's an automatism. You could choose something else other than just passing by. This is why there isn't a real amoral option. You don't have a switch to turn off your awareness and block the access while passing by.

In the same way one could dissect your example with voting between Trump/Biden or not voting. Under certain ethics, not voting will be immoral or moral. But not amoral.

For example, if you consider not voting a way to express your discomfort with a reductionist political system, then your choice and action are moral under your ethics.

If you think you should vote for Biden, but don't do it out of laziness... Then you are being immoral under your ethics.

If you vote for Biden because you think it's a better option, it's still moral under your ethics...

And finally, if you don't vote because you aren't sure about what is correct, you are choosing to be cautious, which is moral under your ethics (if it's considered the most adequate in such circumstances). Analogous to the moral dilemma in 2).

Again, there isn't an option where it's not accessible to your awareness. You shouldn't know about the situation at all to consider not voting amoral.

This type of terminology is also useful to refer to non-human animals as amoral. Because in their case there isn't an access to a proper understanding of their actions under a criterion like ethics. There are learning processes present in them, mainly by pre-conscious association between stimuli or stimuli and behavior. Not everything is instinct. But these processes aren't enough to create a solid consciousness to analyze their choices like we do. Which is why it's nonsensical to consider a cat's actions as moral or immoral.

Properly amoral human actions would be reflexes, physical changes in emotional reactions (nuances explained in the beginning), automatic functions of our organism (like heartbeat) or actions under the effects of drugs or anything that creates a bias in the analysis or breaks the access to that awareness. Actually some of these aren't really actions regarding this topic.

What if we try to re-adapt the terminology to yours?

Concepts like responsibility and obligation are normalized in different ways in different social contexts. Someone may not perceive as his responsibility to help others if they aren't family or very close friends. But another person may consider it responsible. In the same fashion some people imply you are a racist yourself if you don't call out racists (extreme example to make my point). It obviously also depends on the topic...

But let's ignore all this and just try to approach ethics in your terms. Morality or ethics would be concepts only involved with very significant choices and decisions that are very clearly wrong. Like murder, robbing, insulting/hurting someone out of nowhere, etc. This alone would require a consistent criterion to establish what is significant and what isn't to avoid an arbitrary bias from social norms, but, again, let's ignore this for a moment as well. What happens when we are already in the area of what you would call amoral or outside ethics?

I wouldn't be responsible or obligated to try to help you in a situation like your phobia. And you wouldn't be responsible or obligated to support my stance in front of people who wanted unfairly to cancel me (it's me who cancelled them from my life though, but the most wouldn't understand this).

It's obvious that police won't arrest me if I wouldn't try to help you (contextual justice system) and no lightning will kill me either (anything outside the contextual justice system). You aren't my brother or son either...

Yet the choice is still not irrelevant. Even under your terminology, the choice would make you more likely to think I am a better person than what you thought. Or if you want, not as bad as you thought.

Your choice isn't irrelevant under my terminology either. It's moral and there would be progressively fewer attempts to cancel people if more would speak up to argument logically why cancelling is wrong.

If our choices aren't irrelevant, you would need another way to designate this other variable related to the type of decisions you consider outside ethics. Don't call it ethics. Don't use moral/immoral. However, it's still something related to choices and the concrete choices are still relevant.

Why try to use another redundant concept only for a portion of what is technically still related to ethics and philosophy? Especially when you can avoid some of the mentioned local bias and develop a system above your social-historic context.

And we already have local normalized terms for what is proper obligation and restriction from the legal system. Like crime. And it's obvious that the legal system is something much simpler and rudimentary than ethics. The legal system should be actually developed from well developed ethics (improved and updated if necessary).

This is why everything is about politics is very inaccurate too. And not even everything is about ethics is totally accurate under my terminology, because, as I said, there are still some instances where we are technically amoral. A better expression is: where there are choices, there are ethics. Complex ones, dumb ones, simple ones, default ones... But still ethics.

When you are choosing between chocolate or vanilla ice-cream it's just that you perceive both choices as acceptable and moral. And ironically even in such an apparently silly decision, you could still go deeper and consider where the ice-cream comes from, the exploitation of non-human animals to get the milk, if it's right or not, etc.

(The differences between how you and I conceive ethics are obviously deeper and more complex than merely terminological; this was just an oversimplified example to argument why I prefer my terminology).

Honesty.

If the optimization of the explained base freedom is important, the interaction with universality means that I should also care about the optimization of the base freedom from others. Not just mine.

It's obviously a very complex part of my ethics because one can't choose to expose or project everything that is in one's mind, as some form of absolute honesty. A strategy to pick what is relevant and what isn't is still involved. But what matters for the subtopic is that in some situations where it's normatively better perceived to not say anything, I would still express what I consider correct.

I will only use the most recent example:

Valy was someone who followed me and I occasionally interacted with. He asked me to use certain pronouns... I could have easily just blocked him/used the pronouns in a non-genuine way despite considering them nonsensical for complex reasons, which pretty much nobody understood/I could have just ignored him (never talking with him ever again)...

All these options would be totally possible for me. But they would mean that I am limiting the quality and quantity of relevant info he would receive.

I also considered very probable a negative reaction, yet choosing accordingly (to that prediction) would mean that I would be deciding for both. In other words, I was honest because I precisely tried to care about Valy, giving him the chance to decide knowing the truth.

He chose in one of the dumbest ways possible... Still his choice. But if you understand the reason why I give honesty so much importance, you will also understand how ironic is that after that idiotic reaction others treated him like some type of hero for blocking me. When I could have just not cared about him and blocked him beforehand (even though most probably I would have been accused of being a transphobe and other nonsense anyway precisely for blocking him...).

Actual answer to the question about suicide.

Under my terminology and ethics, it's obvious that suicide wouldn't be amoral unless it's heavily conditioned by something like drugs. And even in that case we would have to analyze if it's an accident or at some point that person wanted to die. We could also argue about psychological states where, even without the bias from medication or other substances, a certain point is reached where any attempt of an impartial reasoning is almost impossible without help. The mind is already broken and technically it's not really the same person who decides. In the same way someone with Alzheimer isn't really choosing like his or her version without Alzheimer. It's a too significant change.

Could it be moral?

Depending on one's ethics, it definitely could.

Even under my own, if someone is in a really bad situation that will most likely never change significantly because of factors that he/she can't control. But in general, it's immoral if there is a chance.

Under the unrealistic assumption that nobody else is affected, it may seem the criterion for universality becomes weak or useless. It doesn't. It's still not extrapolatable, and even if nobody else committed suicide, ever, at lest one person would still be affected: the person who commits it. And the world doesn't become any better for one less sentient being and his or her potential contribution.

I can infer your answer would be in the line of amoral. But again, even if we have very different ethics, it would still be an ultimately really relevant choice. Technically the most relevant one. So we would need again another concept to approach this choice if you don't want to call it morality or ethics. While I would consider more efficient to keep it inside ethics, as they are related to choices, and at most create subdivisions for different types of ethical decisions (under my ethics it's also not nearly as immoral to kill oneself as killing another person against his/her will, analogously to how it's not equally immoral to insult out of nowhere compared to an aggressive response to others' unprovoked insults).

Hate.

What did all this have to do with hate...

Hate is just analogous to the more extreme example with suicide. And others like being silently depressed and not doing anything to improve, or being a silent racist (who unrealistically doesn't affect others because he doesn't practice racism explicitly). The severity and relevance is much lower with the origin of the discussion, but the question is that decisions are still involved, thus some type of criterion or ethics are still present too.

In the case of being silently depressed, under my ethics educating yourself, asking for help, etc., would be a moral choice. Remaining silent would be immoral.

Even in the hypothetical of being the only human being alive, feeling hate would still be attached to decisions and consequences. And at least one person would still be affected.

Then, in a more practical example, hate will inevitably affect processing and perception, which is why I say that it's more moral to minimize it to optimize the base freedom. It's more universable to not hate, even if hating is understandable.

As you said, it can be a strong motivator, and I don't deny that function. But the important question is if it's absolutely necessary. And there are alternatives that don't cause such cognitive bias (all this without even considering the unpleasant state of hating).

Finally, assuming we disagree forever regarding the efficiency of hate, the choice to minimize it or not is still relevant.

Why do I criticize hate as inefficient emotion when I call people retards every now and then though...

As I have explained to Turtle and others already, I don't follow my own ethics since long ago (partially only in some circumstances). Which is why I consider immoral many aspects of my own behavior/choices since some years. It should be a natural inference from the text too.

When I applied my ethics I would never insult others even after being attacked. And would keep offering as much relevant info as possible. In a persuasive way, but without insulting. Until I concluded there wasn't enough potential to make the communication evolve.

I applied them when I was younger, and stopped at some point because of how exhausting it was to put so much thought on everything when you are pretty much the only one who does it. It did have a positive impact on people with certain potential, but I didn't want to keep doing it. On top of the exhaustion, one also has to deal with many calling you pretentious, arrogant, pedantic and what not in current common social groups (even in an academic context), before even grasping why you bother explaining all this.

In this entry I merely touch some parts of my ethics and I don't even explain much about my epistemology. There are also many subtopics, like what should be the optimal way to communicate with others to increase base freedom, which social norms from our construct should be re-adapted, why happiness alone isn't a good criterion for ethics and should always be a positive side-effect instead of an immediate objective, the deal with our own design and which are the reasonable limits (we can't choose in absolute terms, as we will always operate from our design and its default objectives), etc.

This doesn't mean they aren't extrapolatable, proving themselves wrong. It simply means it's utterly hard to apply them when almost nobody else elaborates ethics to such degree. Maybe in some hundreds or thousands of years (if humans don't annihilate themselves in some way) the social context would be much more suited to apply ethics like these, or even the normative default ethics will evolve to something similar... Currently it's just hard and takes way too much energy when you are surrounded by people who can't even tolerate an argumented discrepancy about the use of 2 pronouns (even if my reaction was immoral under my own ethics too).

Also I don't think I really hate all the people I have called retards. It's the way I express my frustration and use that insult because of how general it is.

I probably hate more DMC4 than retards.