Jordan comments on Morality and relativistic vertigo - Less Wrong
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Comments (78)
The problem with this whole line of reasoning is that people really don't change their beliefs even if their reasons for their beliefs are shown to be contradictory with other values or internally logically incoherent. So even if you prove to someone that gay parents are not bad for kids with a huge longitudinal study with random assignment and causal control, a lot of people will simply say it still is inherently immoral for kids to be raised by gays. You can't say they're wrong.
People aren't optimizing for some coherent set of values, we just have a set of purely non-rational feelings about moral issues.
The gay parents example jumped out at me as a bad example as well (the two morals stated aren't contradictory in light of a study showing gays to be good parents). The first two examples illustrate Academian's point well though.
Contradictions actually do change peoples minds, I think. Look at birth control in Catholicism. Despite the pope himself saying it is wrong, many Catholics use it and support it (because to do otherwise would contradict other morals/desires they have).
What if being raised by gay parents improved a lot of cognitive functions, and had no significant effect on other personality traits? Or some other uncompromisingly positive effect?
I don't know how that would happen, but I don't really know much about having gay parents anyway. The point is that science would help me have a better opinion than whatever I have so far.