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Comment by erikpukinskis | Hacker News Reader

> Morality is, unfortunately, subjective. Part of the argument is in convincing your opponent that your morality is superior to theirs. Or, perhaps, that their stance violates their own sense of morality.

Why? I can't just live morally and let my "opponent" do what they think is right?

I feel very strongly that people should decide what they think is right and fight for it.

I feel no need to convince other people that my morality is superior to theirs.

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> I feel very strongly that people should decide what they think is right and fight for it.

> I feel no need to convince other people that my morality is superior to theirs.

Those two statements are in direct contradiction. Fighting for your morality is convincing others of its superiority. Those two things are the same thing.

> Fighting for your morality is convincing others of its superiority.

Unless your morality includes letting others come to their own conclusions about what is right. In that case, trying to convince others that they should let others pick their own morals would be self-contradictory.

In what sense are you fighting for your morality, then? It isn't contradictory to hold that view, but if you hold that view, then inherently you would not fight for it.

They're not entirely the same thing. For example, if you think people have a right to privacy, one way to fight for it is to write cryptographic software, so everybody who already agrees with you can protect themselves. That doesn't require you to convince anyone who disagrees.

If you fight to win (in at least as much as keeping your freedom to encrypt), you will have to convince your government at some point. The topic won't go away and if they care strongly enough you might find yourself in your own private full-on intelligence war, and maybe in prison. At some point tech cannot help you (rubber-hose cryptography).

Law is not the only moral battlefield.

Could you elaborate? I think I do not understand your point.

That isn't fighting for your morality, though. That's just making crypto software.

> I feel very strongly that people should decide what they think is right and fight for it.

I believe ISIS would agree with you whole-heartedly

> I believe ISIS would agree with you whole-heartedly

I suspect ISIS would not agree with that statement, but with one that is slightly different:

"I feel very strongly that people should decide that what I think is right and fight for it."

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