Feed the Beast

If half of the world was war-hungry, and the other half was war-hungry but suddenly decided to have a pacifist morality to avoid war and destruction, they would create massive amounts of deficiency (as well as war and destruction, from the other war-hungry morality focusing all it's energy into destroying the pacifist morality)

I on the other hand am certain that eating people is always bad, wrong, and immoral, regardless of anyone's beliefs or society. If a society says "this person ought to be killed and eaten because <any reasons>" I would say that society's morals and incorrect. Not because of any deficiency but because it's always wrong to eat people.

That's completely natural. You obviously believe in a morality that thinks that cannibalism is wrong.

If a person who believes that cannibalism is right complained to you then they would cause near-100% deficiency, for believing in a morality that's the exact opposite of yours.

Not to say that I don't believe in the same morality that you do of cannibalism being wrong.

Also, if you two were to just ignore each other and not complain about each other's moralities then there would be no deficiency. Deficiency can only appear if you put the spotlight on someone else's morality and start stating that your morality is better than theirs, or that theirs is wrong.

There aren't many cannibals in the world, and there probably aren't any reading this forum, so you don't really need to worry about causing deficiency with your morality of cannibalism being wrong versus their morality of cannibalism being right.

Where we differ is that you say that our beliefs about cannibalism are just as valid as the cannibal's beliefs, while I say that there is an absolute standard to which we can compare our beliefs and determine that we are objectively right and the cannibals are objectively wrong.

Suppose you lie to someone. Whatever reasons you may have that say it was okay to lie because it was better for the person to be lied too, or just far too inconvenient to be truthful, you still know that it was wrong to lie...

Indeed.

I see you as a person who believes in the morality of cannibalism being wrong, but you see yourself believing in a correct morality of cannibalism being wrong.

The problem is that as much as people know that certain actions are wrong, they still do them, and then they try to justify it by telling themselves (and others) that in that circumstance it was okay and they didn't really hurt anyone or that their morality is just as good as anyone's. But that doesn't stop the fact that they've done wrong.

I can agree with you there on their morality being wrong.

To do something wrong you have to stray from the general morality that most people follow and make up your own morality, which causes deficiency. If you're causing deficiency you're doing something stupid and idiotic, as your decision to make up your own morality has not only hurt others but it has also hurt yourself.

So you're saying that the absolute standard of right and wrong is causing defficiency and causing hurt.

If society says you have to hurt someone (e.g. sacrifice one person every year), going against that causes deficiency, but following will needlessly hurt someone.

The society is trying to hurt somebody every year. They're doing that exact thing, and they're doing it efficiently, until somebody comes along and says that hurting people is wrong. At that point it'll cause deficiency and the society's ritual of hurting somebody every year will be less efficient.

You're taking into account your own morality, and saying that it's wrong to hurt somebody every year. To that society, it's fine. You and the society's people could argue endlessly about what's correct and what's wrong. What matters is how efficient they're being when carrying out their task of hurting somebody every year.

If I believe all moralities are equal, then me arguing with this society would be meaningless. There would be no point. Arguing would be stupid because it would cause deficiency.
But if I believe that there's an absolute standard, I will have reason to try to help save the person from being hurt.

Using 'reason' to help people causes deficiency, if you're siding with the morality of the person who's going to be hurt. It just gives the general morality another person to fight with.

Does that mean you believe that helping that person would be the wrong thing to do? Or is it the right thing to do despite the consequences?

It helps the person who's being hurt because you're siding with their morality to protect them, but generally it's not efficient since the general morality is much larger than the morality of the person who's going to get hurt.

If you try to help that person then you're getting in the way of the general morality. It just boils down to the same "straying from the pack" deficiency. It creates an unnecessary morality for the general morality to deal with.

It's a good thing that kind of reasoning isn't applied to science. Scientists who discover the old model is wrong have to go against the established paradigm, even though straying from the pack does cause a lot of friction and trouble. But it has to be done or everyone would be stuck believing something incorrect.

If you provide good enough reason to change the direction of the general morality, it can be changed.

The only issue is getting people to believe you with solid factual knowledge, since if it's not good enough to convince people to follow your morality then your discovery is pointless.