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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Neither my comment nor the article ever says 'Human life is precious' is true. What the article says is "'Human life is precious' is something you believe not because of logic, but because other people told you to", which I do believe to be true. It's up a meta-level from the level that you're discussing.

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That is some meta-level nonsense.

The article claims we all believe human life is precious for illogical reasons. Gasp! Comment section erupts in arm chair philosophy. All because they allowed the author to conflate formal system rigour with philosophical nonsense. That is, 'mathematically logical' and 'thinking rationally.' You cannot apply rigour to vague bumper-sticker slogans, they are trivially illogical. Almost nothing is completely logical in daily life. It's not a big shock. There is nothing profound about this. To assume otherwise is naive.

You say "It's about as close to objectively true as you can get." If by 'objectively' you mean 'extremely subjective to the human experience' then I agree with you. Otherwise, I'm not sure what you're on about.

Recognizing this point about irrationality puts pressure on any philosophy to be able to deal with a mixture of reliable and unreliable actors acting in various interests. This means that absolutes are very risky. Including the bumper sticker.

> If by 'objectively' you mean 'extremely subjective to the human experience'

What other experience other than human experience is out there?

> "It's about as close to objectively true as you can get"

I read that as you saying that "Human life is precious" is true, though maybe I have misunderstood. (Don't take this as that I agree with the other guy though).

Oh, I was referring to the full clause in the parent post ('one of the examples they provide for "things you believe not because of logic [thus, it's objectively true], but because other people told you to" is "Human life is a precious thing"') and to the example in the article. I thought that was clear from context ("an excellent example", plus "human life is precious" being mentioned rather than used in my explanation in after the colon), but it's a long phrase, and it's admittedly pretty confusing because the example is itself talking about whether certain statements are objectively true.

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