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Comment by riversflow | Hacker News Reader

> Human civilizations' current abundance of resources allows us the luxury to develop moral "philosophies"

You've got it backwards; Human's current abundance is the creation of human cooperation, which doesn't really work without some sort of ethical framework. Philosophy enables us to achieve more, it is not the result of our achievement.

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In order to achieve the leisure time you need to develop these philosophies you need civilization first. Otherwise you'd be too worried about hunting and gathering to even find the time to think about these things.

A very Complex civilization requires what you talk about, but make no mistake; civilization itself came first.

That depends how you define civilisation. Margaret Mead said it started the moment people went from abandoning to caring for each other in spite of catastrophic injuries that would have required very long periods of recovery.

Someone made the decision to care for another, much less functional person at their own significant expense. Was a philosophical principle behind that or just enlightened self interest? Maybe we have an innate capacity for empathy. Other animals appear to as well.

A dictatorship is a human cooperation as well and while it technically has an ethical framework it's not exactly a victory of philosophy.

"Dicatorship and Cooperation are the same thing, lots of people are telling me this, rigth now!"

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