sam0345 comments on What is moral foundation theory good for? - Less Wrong

9 Post author: novalis 12 August 2012 05:03AM

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Comment author: sam0345 15 August 2012 03:40:44AM *  7 points [-]

Stigmatization is a concern with social norms about male homosexuality because gay men have, in fact, been heavily shunned/persecuted/stigmatized based on their sexuality.

Husbands, fathers, and capitalists, are either demonized or ridiculed on every television show. This is clearly having undesirable effects - less capital formation, less family formation, and less enterprise formation. Why is some people's stigmatization horrid, shocking, and in fact sacrilegious, while other people's stigmatization is no problem at all?

Imagine a public health campaign that told us that certain sexual behaviors were literally dirty, in that one was apt to catch a wide variety of diseases, and that people who engaged in these practices were apt to spread disease even to people who do not engage in them, so that people who engaged in these practices tended to be literally dirty..

Sacrilege

Now substitute "production" for "sex", and perhaps "pollution" for "disease". Absolutely no problem at all. In fact such a campaign would be pious, even if those condemned were plausibly innocent. Even if the campaign was totally untrue, it would be deemed truthy.