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Comment by solveit | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea why you're citing a government website on an ethical question. You realize that law and policy is just something a bunch of people decided was a good idea? The distinction between rights versus privileges, insofar as it is defined by law and policy, has nothing to do with ethics.

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So "law and policy is just something a bunch of people decided was a good idea". What do you think ethics is? If we're going to be really strict, then everything about humans is "just a bunch of people decided was a good idea".

The criticism is that using what the government said to justify what the government then said when both are opinions is weak and circular.

And government’s opinions change far more frequently than ethics.

Government tends not to opine on ethics in official communiques

Do you believe, as I do, that the foundation of ethics is supernatural? If not, then ethics is also just something a bunch of people decided was a good idea too in your world view. And a democratically elected representative legislative body is as good a bunch of people as any to do so.

Edit: this really is the cultural differences thread

> Do you believe, as I do, that the foundation of ethics is supernatural?

In other words: if you don't believe in the supernatural you can't have ethics?

I would expect commenters here to have better reading comprehension skills. I explicitly allowed that one could have ethics based on arbitrary consensus.

That said, your discomfort is natural. After all, if the foundation of ethics is purely natural, then what is it? Logic perhaps? What logic tells us that murder is wrong, when logically murder is sometimes advantageous? Is it science then? What science tells us that rape is wrong, when evolution tells us fitness is propagating genes? Then is it aesthetics? Are goodness and beauty the same? Or is there an objective standard of right and wrong that isn't dependent on any human being's whims or self-interest? If so, what is its source?

I would suggest that rather than critiquing the reading skills of the people commenting on HN to start off from the position that maybe what you wrote was not un-ambiguous.

The way you write is suggestive (including the reply you wrote) and that is why I asked for your clarification.

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