freeism.org - diagrams - morality map

Hints to Understanding 3D Morality

Understanding 3D morality is not easy. It takes a while to get used to it. Even I don't just understand it using the "official definition" (which is that self-interest, sadism and true-care are separate axis).

I use many "hints" to help me get a feel for this thing. So here are many of the things I use to help me understand 3D morality. We all know that there are 12 classes of morality in my 3D morality map, but what other hints can be used to understand it?

Self-interest is a good thing. A "form of light".

Self-interest ranges from positive to neutral (+ to 0). True-care and sadism range from positive to negative! (+ 0 -)

This means you can imagine the 3D morality map as being more shallow than wide or high. But also it's width is equal to it's height.

There are two "forms of light", self-interest, and true-care. Self-interest would be the "first light", and true-care the "second light".

All of 3D morality revolves around self-interest. True-care has no purpose without self-interest. A Universe of angels would be black and empty because they'd have no one to care for. No one that wanted anything anyhow. But a Universe of self-interested beings would actually be quite lovely and full of all sorts of exciting things, and better than life on Earth. (because most people on Earth have a little sadism)

Self-interest may be a good thing, but it's not enough to form a completely innocent Universe, it's not enough to create paradise. For that you need natural-respect or true-care.

Negative sadism is natural-respect

Negative true-care is coldness

Sadism IS NOT the opposite of true-care!

Having a "positive value", isn't necessarily a good thing, and having a negative value isn't a "bad thing". Because having a positive value for sadism is bad, but a negative value for sadism is good.

Coldness is no way near as bad as sadism.

However, natural-respect does lead to many good things. So often it's just as good as true-care, even if not always. This is because of how self-interest works, self-interest is a good thing.

Sadism and true-care can be seen like your relationship to two buttons. Imagine you had two buttons you can press. A blue button and a black button. If you press the blue button it helps someone else who is innocent. If you press the black button, it harms someone else who is innocent.

Now imagine that many of these black and blue buttons are scattered on your path, and there is a nice strawberry pie to eat at the end of this path. The "sadism axis" is about your relationship to the black button.

Having a positive value of sadism, means you'll go out of your way, to press those black buttons, even if it takes you longer to get that strawberry pie.

Having a negative value for sadism (natural-respect), means you'll go out of your way to NOT press those black buttons! Even it it takes you longer to get that pie!

So as you can see, you can't have a positive AND a negative value for sadism. Either you will try to avoid the black buttons, or you will try to press them, or you won't care if you press them or not.

The same works for the blue buttons. A positive value of true-care means you'll go out of your way to press the blue buttons. And a negative value for true-care (coldness) means you'll go out of your way to NOT press those blue buttons.

A purely self-interested person would just walk straight towards that strawberry pie, not caring about what buttons he pressed or didn't press...

A "twisted person", would go out of their way to press BOTH buttons, while on their journey to get the pie! And an "isolationist" would go out of their way to not press any buttons.

An angel would just go for the blue buttons and not even care about the strawberry pie. And a devil would only go for the black buttons and not care about the strawberry pie either.

In theory, self-interest may be completely neutral, so that he would "just walk straight towards" that strawberry pie regardless of the buttons.

HOWEVER, in REALITY, reality just so has it that cooperation is better than fighting. In reality, the path to the strawberry pie is more likely to have blue buttons along the way than black ones. So usually, self-interested people end up doing good things for each other anyhow even out of self-interest.

–––––

Last modified: Friday 11/12/2009 10:28

home diagrams/ evolution/ video/ forum