Ethics

The Ethics of metaculture is based on Utilitarianism, but with some evidence-based solutions to the various problems of utilitarianism that have been raised by critics.
The reason for Utilitarianism is that it is the only ethical system that is potentially subject to scientific inquiry, as long as good can be quantified objectively. Since evolution has correlated what is good for humans with what gives us happiness, if we can measure the happiness of a population we can tell if what we are doing is good, at least relative to other societies we've been able to study.
"Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar." -D. H. Lawrence
While you can really dive deeply into the world of ethical quandaries, the goal of this section is to provide a solid rationale for ethical living and an empirical framework for understanding its importance that doesn't rely on the supernatural. Applying this framework to every conceivable situation, or summarizing 5,000 years of ethical philosophy, are out of scope.
Ethics and Morality Pages
Check out these pages for topics related to ethics and morality.
- Utilitarianism and Consequences
- Meaning, Suffering, Happiness and well-being
- Altruism
- Quality of life versus quantity of life
- Abortion, Euthanasia, and Death Penalty
- Environment, Climate change, and Population
- Safety, Death, and Longevity
- Moral trump card
- Theoretical people
- Subjective and Objective Truth
- Culturally Neutral
- Justice and Authority
- Karma
- Religion and Spirituality
- Outrage and Taboo
- Misinformation and Grift
- Temptation and Delayed Gratification
- Incentives and Games
- Moderation, and Addiction
- Life choices
- Freedom and Free Will
- These things are bad, mkay?
What Are Your Values?
Moral Foundations Theory suggest that our instincts provide seven categories of innate moral judgements upon which our ethical values systems and cultures are derived. These are:
- Care/harm
- Fairness/cheating
- Loyalty/betrayal
- Authority/subversion
- Sanctity/degradation
- Liberty/oppression
- Honor/shame
Progressives tend to emphasize Care, Fairness, and Liberty while Conservatives lean more towards Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity. Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind explores the implications of moral foundations theory and ways that our politics can be more empathetic and less contrarian.
The Honor/Shame foundation was not part of the original Moral Foundations Theory, but has been included in later models to explain the motivations of honor cultures. [1][2]
The website YourMorals.org provides a quick test to see which moral categories you prioritize in your personal ethics.
Follow the links to see how metaculture provides a perspective on humanist values that appeals to all of our moral foundations.
It's About Conviction
In Sapolsky's book Determined, there is a chapter devoted to the notion of moral conviction versus indifference, and the research showing that strong moral convictions, regardless of whether they are secular or religious, correlate to the most prosocial behavior. It is not belief in god or atheism that determines whether you are willing to undermine others to benefit yourself, it is moral indifference.
The chart below helps visualize the results of these studies that show the difference between conviction and indifference in both secular and spiritual contexts. On both sides there are those who lead unexamined lives, by going through the motions of their particular religion to keep up appearances, or pursuing a shallow, materialistic secular life.

Religious people tend to lump all "atheists" into the bottom-right category, falsely assuming that without god there can be only nihilism. They rightly point to the growing number of non-believers who live shallow, materialistic, hedonistic lifestyles that lead more often to addiction than lasting happiness. But it isn't religion that these people truly need, it is conviction! Some may find it in religion, but in modern society there needs to be a secular institution where people can go to deepen and reinforce their convictions and build their community without invoking the supernatural.
Tethics
Culture needs to apply the knowledge we gain from psychology to develop new and improved ethical models for how we interface with modern technology. Inventions alter consequences, so a utilitarian ethics will require recalibration any time a significant new invention alters the way we live life and the choices available to us.
These pages related to the intersection of modern technology, ethics, and important trends in the Zeitgeist of the extremely online that normal people should be aware of.
- Technology
- Future, Longevity, Theoretical People, and Utopia
- Artificial Intelligence
- Platforms, Promotion, and Algorithms
- Trolling, Outrage and Taboo
- Drugs, Addiction, and Monetary Addiction
- Libertarian Crypto-bros in the Manosphere and their Secular Gurus
- Misinformation, Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, Quantum Woo, and Grift
What Are The Rules?
Saying that people should practice utilitarian ethics is easy. Doing the necessary research to determine the best course of action personally as well as in politics and economics is hard. Fortunately there have been many brilliant people throughout history who have worked on this and we can summarize their research into something easy and practical that can be applied in your daily life.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
If you are looking for much more specific recommendations that can help your life choices, see Evidence-Based Best Practices.
If you have recently been quantum leaped into the body of a black person in America, the following musical provides great advice on the rules for this very specific situation.
Other Pop Culture Based Ethical Systems
The Michael Shur program The Good Place is an acceptable alternative to a college intro to ethics course for those who prefer binge TV watching to coursework. His book, How to be Perfect, takes a deeper dive into the entertaining morality lessons from The Good Place. If you aren't going to read Plato, Kant, and Mill, then you can at least binge-watch The Good Place.
There must have been something in the water at Schrute Farm, since another actor from the Office has also put out extensive content dealing with morality, spirituality, and finding meaning. Rainn Wilson's podcasts Soul Boom and Metaphysical Milkshake both have great conversations and perspectives on these subjects. His travel docuseries The Geography of Bliss is also worth a watch to see how the concept of happiness is viewed in different cultures.
Peterson, Harris, and Objective Morality
Since metaculture has the application of science to questions of morality as one of its primary goals, addressing what is meant by "objective morality" and how one might determine it is a useful exercise.
Objective morality is offered as a secular alternative to god-based morality in the common goal of undermining moral relativism, which many consider to be at the heart of the modern nihilistic crisis of meaning. Peterson makes the deontological argument based on universal archetypes from mythology, while Harris argues for a more secular, utilitarian approach. Neither does so in a way that pleases academic philosophers or theologians, though their much wider audiences suggest a mass appeal for their style of informal arguments.
Criticisms of Harris and The Moral Landscape
The videos below have long responses to Sam Harris's Moral Landscape and questioning the notion of "objective" morality. It is unfortunate that he and Jordan Peterson have been linked by their various appearances together, and that Harris's criticisms of Islam have been used to support racist politics and policies. He has otherwise been a leading voice regarding the scientific approach to spiritual subjects like morality and meditation, offering a version of atheism that is significantly more open-minded than your Hitchens or Dawkins. The idea that science can be applied to questions of morality should be strongly considered.
Many lines of criticism come from academic philosophers that point to contradictions in Harris's formal reasoning and failure to address questions raised by a variety of different ethical philosophies throughout history. Many of these criticisms give off AP Bio vibes, since Harris sold millions of books my making his arguments accessible to non-academics, while much smarter men toil in obscurity. There are valid criticisms, but they don't point to unresolvable issues, just ones that Harris failed to resolve to their satisfaction in his book.
Criticisms of Peterson and Archetypal Deontology
There are a ton of criticisms of Jordan Peterson, enough to warrant a separate page. Here, consider specifically the framework for objective morality that he proposes, which can be referred to as archetypal deontology. In summary, he proposes that evolution has hard-coded various mythological archetypes in our brains from which we derive our moral absolutes. Ultimately it's just a Jungian approach compared to Harris' neuroscience approach. The implication is that the prohibition against murder or stealing is somehow encoded as an archetype-based rule, rather than an emergent result of the pleasure/pain principle. Based on what we know about neural networks, self-organizing systems, and artificial intelligence, emergent utilitarianism seems the most likely method that the brain uses to know not to murder. It's much easier to build a simple pleasure/pain rule and let the moral absolutes self-organize than it is to encode Jungian archetypes into your DNA.
Problems of Utilitarianism
The utilitarian ethics of metaculture avoids the major criticisms of Harris by recognizing the subjective nature of self-reporting happiness and measuring it on the aggregate instead of the individual level. We can know statistically whether one society or culture is happier than another, and whether changes to various policies or beliefs have an impact on that measure. It doesn't claim an objective morality, but rather one that can be improved over time with study and comparison. If an "objective" morality exists it can only be approached and never reached, and each moral grey area must be considered individually--no simple rules apply universally (see Gödel).
The utilitarian page also addresses the problems of utilitarianism that Harris doesn't cover in his book. It is unlikely that he had not actually considered the oldest and most pedantic counterarguments, versus making an editorial decision that including them would bore readers and hurt book sales.
Is/Ought Problem
The happiness page provides a resolution for Hume's is/ought problem that Harris doesn't address in a satisfactory way. Regardless of whether you think that this line of reasoning resolves the problem or not, the idea that science can inform the pursuit of happiness cannot be denied. Insisting that it isn't "objective" because there is no certainty that happiness is the truest meterstick of human success should not impact your life choices. Happiness is a safe bet, and one that most people will choose to wager on it even if there is a logical paradox behind the proof that they should. Reality has a logical paradox at its core, so it really shouldn't bother anyone that has accepted that fact (see Gödel again).
Cultural Chauvinism
The metaculture wiki avoids the cultural bias criticisms by taking a perspective that fundamentally opposes war and the use of power to enforce ideology, and that all religions and cultures should be embraced. The argument could be made that certain passages in the Quran form a generating equation that create a pattern of violence, and significant text could be dedicated to supporting that argument, as Harris unfortunately chose to do. This rhetoric is inherently divisive and against the spirit of universalism that metaculture is striving for. But even if there was strong evidence to support such a view (not saying there is), there would be absolutely no implication that discrimination or violence could ever be an acceptable response to it.
Instead of the perspective that "Western culture is objectively better than others because we invented science and democracy" that smells a lot like racism, it's more like "Science allows people of all cultures to discover their shared humanity and speak about it with a common language. Let's use this to adopt a universal system of ethics so we don't kill each other, and we can solve global problems like climate change together." It's looking at the same set of facts from a different perspective.
The main reason for the strong objections to "objective" comparisons of cultural morality is the fear that it can be used to justify violence, which was the primary concern of the postmodern movement towards relativism. It should be possible to demonstrate that cultural self-determination increases the global utilitarian quotient, because even if a nation has an extremely authoritarian and repressive religion or government, getting bombs dropped on you is always worse. It isn't possible to justify using war or violence to "liberate" a repressive culture, unless it becomes a genocide and the innocent need to be protected. It may be sad, but the best you can do is lead with a good example, and advocate for the virtues of freedom until they make the decision to change. Once they do, it should be possible to take a survey and get conclusive evidence about whether their society is objectively happier or not.
There is also a strong utilitarian argument against cultural chauvinism and for universalism. Making the case that one culture is superior to another causes discord and leads to conflict. Finding ways to promote new beliefs, rituals, and institutional changes that improve overall happiness is going to have better payoff than making long dissertations on why Christianity is relatively better than Islam or other religions.
Wiki > Book
The other way metaculture avoids common criticisms of Harris or Peterson is by using a wiki that is expansive enough to actually address all of the questions, something that is impossible to do with a book, even a really long one. The wiki also avoids criticism by being editable, so any valid criticism is invalidated by the next edit.
Probably, Not Definitely
Finally, metaculture doesn't make claims about "objective truth" the way Harris does. It simply suggests that the pursuit of utilitarian happiness is a safe bet when it comes to measuring the aggregate success of a society's ethics, and it's also a good bet that science and evidence can inform that pursuit better than any other source of knowledge.
Here's the Sam Harris talk on The Moral Landscape.
Here is a good example of the criticism of Harris from the academic philosophy perspective. The criticism treats the books as if it was the foundational research for the establishment of a new theoretical model rather than a popular science book that tries to introduce these concepts to people that don't have extensive backgrounds in neuroscience or ethical philosophy, and make a persuasive argument in favor of ethics that can be informed by empirical data. This is not the same goal that academic works have, though they tend to judge popular works by those standards.
Here is an excellent discussion of Jordan Peterson's philosophy of meaning and Harris' Moral Landscape as opposing critiques of moral relativism. It offers insightful criticisms of both. The moral of this story is that you shouldn't use work written for a popular audience as the final authority for any theory, and not everyone cares to know the 2000+ years of philosophical debate behind every proposition.
Ethics in Music
One song for moral convictions, and one song against.