[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

And remember that alongside "do unto others" there is the equally important "an eye for an eye". Nothing wrong with retributive justice.

What's the retributive justice for a rapist?
A homeless man who sleeps in a public space?
A homeless man who sleeps in a private space?

[alancalverd]

You haven't defined intelligence or consciousness, nor explained why I should give a damn about a machine I can switch off. As for organisations, the only things that have any moral consequence are the people in them.

I have, although you just don't accept them.
Biological entities can also be killed. It's not a reason to ignore them.

There are acceptable reasons for killing biological entities. In a finite environment, biology is competitive, and the definition of an animal is a biological entity that cannot synthesise its own body parts from inorganic materials, which means that for the most part we kill other BEs to eat.

That might be true for current situation. But that may change in the future. It depends on how you define people, i.e. what is the boundary condition to determine if something is appropriately called people?

If its parents were classified as homo sapiens.

[alancalverd]

Is there anything which has inherent right of survival? Where does the right come from?

It is conferred (or not) by other living things. In most cases the right is conferred on an entire species but can be set aside for individuals that threaten or inconvenience me.

[alancalverd]

What makes civilised countries morally better than uncivilised countries?

A lack of corruption, a legal system based on the notion of the state serving the citizen, and equality before the law.

Don't you think that they are also legal fictions?

no. A country is a bounded area with a consistent legal system. I can see New Zealand on the map and on the ground, and as long as the inhabitants maintain an adequate military force to defend it, it will probably remain a civilised country in fact. Likewise northern Europe. Most of the English-speaking world, with the obvious exception of the USA, at least has civilised pretensions.

[alancalverd]

Most of my work is done by a car, a plane, and a whole bunch of electronic instruments. I generally look after them (the instruments don't like being left out in the rain, but the car and plane are less likely to get damaged if I leave them in a field) and they look after me, but as a sane adult I don't have any moral duty to them.

In the light of universal terminal goal, one of your moral duty to them is to not break them down willy nilly.

That's an economic choice, not a moral duty. I can scrap stuff for which I have no further use (or so The Boss tells me - I quite like living in a science museum!)

Modern humans make decisions based on the information they get from news and social media, among some other sources such as their own experience. Those data feeds are increasingly controlled by algorithms running in the cloud servers utilizing artificial intelligence. Their influence on human individuals might be more significant than influence of other human individuals.

Anyone who trusts "social media " (whatever that is) above his own judgement is a fool. My decisions are based on need, experience, and corroborated or verifiable data. I've had viral diseases, and have a good friend who suffered from the currently fashionable one, so my present behavior is based on that knowledge, not what President Cummings would like you to believe.

[alancalverd]

I'm not the one who promoted golden rule as a universal moral standard.

I am.

What makes a human parasite?

Opportunity to profit from the hard work and money of others without doing anything useful. 

What makes an organization evil?

Anything from endemic corruption and incompetence to outright antisocial behavior.

[/quote]

[alancalverd]

What's the retributive justice for a rapist?

Prison, with the option of suicide.

A homeless man who sleeps in a public space?

Not a crime as long as no damage is done and he cleans up afterwards.

A homeless man who sleeps in a private space?

Not a crime as long as no damage is done and he cleans up afterwards. We had a local hero who slept in a hedgerow and one day rescued the landowner's child from a fire. The landowner offered him a roof for life but he said he preferred the open air, so the landowner gave him the hedge. Reads like a fairytale but the whole story was well known, as was he (he helped on several farms and played darts in the pub) and his camp site.
 
There is an adequate system of fines and community service for those who make a mess. Pity it isn't applied more rigorously, because it's a breach of the golden rule.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There are acceptable reasons for killing biological entities. In a finite environment, biology is competitive, and the definition of an animal is a biological entity that cannot synthesise its own body parts from inorganic materials, which means that for the most part we kill other BEs to eat.

Can humans be classified as animal?

If its parents were classified as homo sapiens.

What gives homo sapiens such privilege? What if a human specimen has no parent, e.g. by growing a syntetic zygote in an artificial womb?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Is there anything which has inherent right of survival? Where does the right come from?

It is conferred (or not) by other living things. In most cases the right is conferred on an entire species but can be set aside for individuals that threaten or inconvenience me.

Why it's called inherent in the first place?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

What makes civilised countries morally better than uncivilised countries?

A lack of corruption, a legal system based on the notion of the state serving the citizen, and equality before the law.

Don't you think that they are also legal fictions?

no. A country is a bounded area with a consistent legal system. I can see New Zealand on the map and on the ground, and as long as the inhabitants maintain an adequate military force to defend it, it will probably remain a civilised country in fact. Likewise northern Europe. Most of the English-speaking world, with the obvious exception of the USA, at least has civilised pretensions.

What makes lack of corruption, a legal system based on the notion of the state serving the citizen, and equality before the law, morally better? Does the king/queen equal peasants?

Can you see Mongolia or Switzerland from ISS?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landlocked_country


What makes the result of this war more than legal fictions?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Most of my work is done by a car, a plane, and a whole bunch of electronic instruments. I generally look after them (the instruments don't like being left out in the rain, but the car and plane are less likely to get damaged if I leave them in a field) and they look after me, but as a sane adult I don't have any moral duty to them.

In the light of universal terminal goal, one of your moral duty to them is to not break them down willy nilly.

That's an economic choice, not a moral duty. I can scrap stuff for which I have no further use (or so The Boss tells me - I quite like living in a science museum!)

Modern humans make decisions based on the information they get from news and social media, among some other sources such as their own experience. Those data feeds are increasingly controlled by algorithms running in the cloud servers utilizing artificial intelligence. Their influence on human individuals might be more significant than influence of other human individuals.

Anyone who trusts "social media " (whatever that is) above his own judgement is a fool. My decisions are based on need, experience, and corroborated or verifiable data. I've had viral diseases, and have a good friend who suffered from the currently fashionable one, so my present behavior is based on that knowledge, not what President Cummings would like you to believe.

A multibillionaire buys all Lithium on earth and then send them to the sun for fun. You can imagine the next story.

More information is generated than a human individual can verify each day. We are often forced to make decision based on unverified information due to time constraint.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Anything from endemic corruption and incompetence to outright antisocial behavior.

What makes them evil? What makes them different from something else which are not evil?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Prison, with the option of suicide.

That's not an eye for an eye.

People's tolerance from privacy breaching varies widely.

[alancalverd]

Can humans be classified as animal?.

There are only two kinds of living things: animal and plant. If you can't photosynthesise, you are an animal.

What gives homo sapiens such privilege? What if a human specimen has no parent, e.g. by growing a syntetic zygote in an artificial womb?

Arbitrary choice. Most animals tend to favor their own species, though it has always puzzled me why people think young furry quadrupeds are cute. A synthetic zygote is just that.

[alancalverd]

Why it's called inherent in the first place?

Because it is a consequence of species, therefore inherited sui generis et prima facie.

[alancalverd]

What makes lack of corruption, a legal system based on the notion of the state serving the citizen, and equality before the law, morally better?

The state thus meets the "do unto others" criterion

Does the king/queen equal peasants?

Yes. Primus inter pares is a good concept. Walking through a barracks in Stockholm one day I noticed a rather nicely appointed office. My Swedish colleague said "That's where the king works three days a week as head of the armed forces." Being hereditary, the commander in chief has no internal political agenda and the military defends the people, not the president.

Can you see Mongolia or Switzerland from ISS?

Yes, but the borders are more obvious from the road.

What makes the result of this war more than legal fictions?

As with any war, it ended with (new) defended boundaries enclosing internally consistent legal systems. 

[alancalverd]

A multibillionaire buys all Lithium on earth and then send them to the sun for fun. You can imagine the next story.

[ That's capitalism. I'd have a serious word with the fool who sold him the last gram for less than an infinite amount of money.

More information is generated than a human individual can verify each day. We are often forced to make decision based on unverified information due to time constraint.

We are quite good at processing the information that affects us, and experience helps us guess or trust what we cannot verify. All we know about "social media" is that it is populated by and directed at people of lesser morals and intelligence than ourselves.

[alancalverd]

Anything from endemic corruption and incompetence to outright antisocial behavior.

What makes them evil? What makes them different from something else which are not evil?

They breach the Golden Rule

[alancalverd]

Prison, with the option of suicide.

That's not an eye for an eye.

The Jewish interpretation of that scripture is "to the value of an eye for an eye". This allows the State to administer retributive justice that is not completely irreversible on appeal, unlike the Shariah interpretation that recommends amputation of the offending organ - at least in the case of theft. 

I'm very much in favor of encouraging longterm prisoners to commit suicide. Solves their problems and ours.

People's tolerance from privacy breaching varies widely.

Which is why trespass and the invasion of privacy is mostly a civil tort, not a criminal offence. 

[alancalverd]

A multibillionaire buys all Lithium on earth and then send them to the sun for fun. You can imagine the next story.

Just remembered - no need to imagine!

Back in the 1980s the Bunker Hunt brothers decided to corner the world market in silver by judiciously buying any ingot that came on the market.

Jewellery is quite an elastic market. If a style or metal goes out of fashion, it gets reworked or recycled within the trade, and the customer is paying for workmanship, not metal content, so there was little effect there. The principal use of silver was in x-ray film, consuming several tons each day, and an increasingly essential rather than fashionable commodity.

As the silver price began to rise, the market responded first by investing in silver recovery (since most x-ray images are of people who have either died or recovered, film has little clinical value after a couple of years) then by improving film chemistry to reduce the silver content by up to 90%, then finally by switching to digital imaging. The Bunker Hunts lost their money.

So  by all means dump the lithium in the sun. It will stimulate they hydrogen economy and get rid of mobile phones, so people will start talking to their families again.