Where Does Morality Come From?

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Music: Small Losses by CMA

[MatthewBaran]

I wake up to more telltale. This is going to be a great day. Thanks TT :)

[sphericalchess]

I’ve been watching your other channel for a while, and have found it very interesting. This is my first time here at this channel, and enjoyed the video. Keep going, you are making a difference!

[aidanr]

Good work Telltale, you definitely put a lot of my thoughts into words well. I appreciate the video!

[tabularasa]

Most people will say they would flip the switch. They recently did an experiment (VSause or Veritassium I forget who) And only 1 of 5 actually flipped the switch. The rest hesitated and didn't know what to do. (It was a simulation but the people involved didn't know it was a simulation)

[jordansievert]

I really enjoy the new drawings in this episode. 👍🏼💖

[cheshirecat]

The Moral landscape -Sam Harris
The Genealogy of Morality -Friedrich Nietzsche

[phoenix]

I have done a lot of research over the years on diets and their effects. I read a study (forgive me for not listing source, it has been a while) that showed the most sustainable and environmentally friendly diet is one that is no more than 20% meat. Just slightly more sustainable than vegetarian diet with eggs and dairy.

[intylerwetrust]

The golden rule: The iconic way in which we go about our moral systems and every culture out there having some variant on it. It being very interesting whether the variant is 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' or is it 'don't do unto others as you would not have them do to you'. And I suspect, that tells you something about a basic pessimism of the latter of cultures. But, this is universal. This is all over the place. This is us. And it's efficiently us that here's actually people who spend careers doing highly complex mathematics on ways to optimize game playing, to optimize circumstances of golden rule. And, these are people who inform economists and war theorists and diplomats. Game theory stuff and there's all sorts of ways in which these strategies are optimized. The one, the classic one that was shown by an economist named Robert Axelrod is the incredibly simple strategy for going about competing with somebody else the tit for tat rule. You start off cooperating. If they cooperate with you, you continue cooperating. If at some point they stab you in the back the next time, you stab them in the back in return. And if they go back to cooperating, so do you and this optimizes a whole competitive strategy. Now, this was worked out mathematically in the seventies and the zoologist at this point looked at it and said "Ha. I wonder if there's any animals out there who also use tit for tat optimization strategies for when they cooperate and when they compete." And it turns out, we're not the only ones with that either. First example... Okay, horrible, vicious, nightmare vampire bat creature that haunts our nightmares... In actuality, when a vampire bat is drinking up some cow's blood, it is being a very good mommy. Because what she's doing, is getting blood in order to feed her babies. Vampire bats store the blood in a throat sack, they fly back to their nest, and they go to the babies and they disgorge the blood to feed their babies. Very interestingly, these are big social communal nests. They also disgorge blood to feed everybody else's babies. It's a whole communal feeding system. They all cooperate. Make the bats think that one of the females in there is cheating, is not fulfilling her social contract. She comes out of the nest there and you net her and you take a hold of her and you take a syringe full of air and you pump up the throat sack so it's nice and big and full and distended and push her back into the nest. And, everybody's sitting there saying 'Oh, my god. Look at that throat sack. Look how much blood she's got in there and she's not feeding my babies.' And the next round, nobody feeds her babies. They tit for tat her back. They do some version of the golden rule. Now, bats are not some of the smartest folks around. But you could see the same thing in fish, in stickleback fish. Here's what you do... You take advantage of their extraordinary cognition. You take a stickleback in a tank and make him believe that he is being attacked by another fish. You put a mirror up against the side of a tank there. So of course, he's immediately lunging at it and all of that and saving the territory and all the nationalism and that territorial waters and that kind of stuff and fighting off this invader. Now, make the stickleback think that he's got a cooperative partner. Take a second mirror and put it up perpendicular to him. So every time he's moving forward, he's seeing this other fish there doing the same thing. And he's saying 'You know, I don't know who this guy is, but he's great. 'Cause there's another guy attacking there and we're like totally synchronized. And, yay team!' And now, now make him think the other fish is cheating on him. Take the mirror and angle it this way, so the image is deflected backward and he seems to further back. And he's saying "That son of a bitch, I can't believe it! Here we are, being attacked and oh yeah, he's pretending to go but I see he's hanging back there, I'm blistering "That son of a bitch, I can't believe it! Here we are, being attacked and he's just hanging back there." And the next time he sees his image, he doesn't attack it. He believes he's tit-for-tatting the guy. So we are not alone in this whole realm of wanting to do unto others and don't do unto others, and taking tit-for-tat revenge. But what is unique about us is our capacity to have not do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but to understand circumstances in which somebody else's reward is not the same sort of reward that you would have. And there are very few species out there who would understand what this one is about. Beat me, said the mashochist. No, said the sadist. Understanding that, we might all have very different values of what things we are rewarded by. Okay. So we are somewhat unique there.""prof. Robert Sapolsky

[Queenbluestar]

Funny how you post this so close to my psychology exam

[Aircooledboxers]

Is it of higher morality to save the larger numbers rather than consider who is on the tracks?

[cielbie]

To me, when it comes to animals, they live mostly in the present. They feel pain, they feel emotions, they remember what happened to them last time certain events occured, they can even feel sad at the loss of a friend depending on the animal.
But they live in the present, and also have a much more limited understanding of the world than humans. And their ethics are usually quite simple compared to ours.

So with that in mind, causing an animal prolonged and unnecessary pain and suffering, or emotional trauma is unethical. But a quick death before the animal even realizes or feels what is happening is much less unethical than if it were a human.

To me, that should be the goal of anything when it comes to an animals pain and wellbeing ethics, make sure that the moment they live in is a good moment until the end.

When it comes to animals for food, I unfortunately dont know anything about how most farms slaughter their animals and what the animals feel during and leading up to the event.
However, if I were to paint scenarios of what I would think is ethical and what isn't, I would say the following.

Many farmers for maximum milk, egg, etc. output put as little stress on the animals as possible, this is something I know. Most countryside cows and sheep have nice lives in comparison to how it could be in the wild. They have minimal stress, all the food they could need, they are protected from harsh ailments with provided shelter, they have their friends (cows indeed have friends) and overall, in an ideal situation, it should be a good life for the cow.
And in exchange we should give them a short quick death, in ideal situations. A much kinder death than in the wild.
In that aspect it is a relationship of mutual benefit. We give them lives and deaths better than they could get without us, and in exchange we get their meat.

In a scenario that is not as kind, like battery hens, or animals suffering from diseases that are painful, or torture breeding, or stressful lives, or long unethical deaths, this to me is abhorant.
And unfortunately this happens too often for my liking, and to be honest, if I knew exactly the situations the animals I eat were raised in, I would probably not eat most meat I am guessing, unless it fits the criteria I have said above as being ethical.

I wish I knew more about exactly what was happening. I eat meat and probably couldn't give it up even if I wanted to. But if I were to say what my ethics would be to the different scenarios above, I just wish that all the animals I eat really do have lives which make it a fair exchange and mutual benefit.

With hunting I know even less. I can only say I hope they kill the animal as fast as possible and painlessly as possible. Not always possible, and many do, but I am just hoping. Nature can be far more cruel than human hunters.
I also am more against hunting native animals such as foxes and badgers in the UK than I am invasive species like rabbits in the UK and wild boars in the US. But again, I know little about each situation and what is needed in each country, state, local area.

But when hunting, the concerns should be the ecosystem and a quick painless death. In my opinion. I can't say whether people do, but I can say what I personally find important.

[johnmurphy]

We Evolved with our moral. Our Morals Evolve with our society. Empathy is its basis. There is also the Veil of Ignorance.

[Chem_-jpem]

I never thought of empathy. I always thought of the issue as a trust based system.

Now here’s a question for you, do you believe that morality is a human thing or an artifact of social creatures? I personally think that all social creatures have some form of morality but I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

[Darth]

Ah quite the intricate subject.

I think morality is born from a balance between empathy, which is survival of the species, and other emotions calling on survival of self. If someone healthy has to give up his kidneys to save five dying people, he doesn't want to because it'll send him to death (survival of self) but some in this situation will do it anyway and sacrifice themselves for the other 5 (empathy). That's basically why the russian workers who went to Tchernobyl right after it exploded, knowing they had no chance of survival, are heroes.

As for empathy with animals, that's nothing special actually. Inter species interactions and empathy can happen, even if much harder than intra species. I follow an private owner of many animals in South Africa, many dogs and cats, several monkeys, and two tigers. A few weeks ago (maybe months now ?) he had a video showing how the cat mother and the dog mother were doing. As explained and shown, the cat mother kept watching over the pups while the dog mother kept watching over the kittens. Mutual trust and mutual help in the motherly needs outside of feeding obviously. I will look for the link to post it here if you want

What's important isn't just to treat them well though, it goes further than that : communication. You need to learn to communicate with the animal, he won't learn it for you. But if you do you can convey messages (simple ones obviously). An example would be cats, again, and slow blinking while immitating their purring all while showing a hand to sniff. Once sniffed the cat knows you, he sees your slow blink as friendly and your pur as good mood, caress bellow the chin and he will know for sure you're a friend. These aren't random, cats use them too with you or between them, it's their language.

Edit : first of 2 links coming ;)

Edit 2 : second link showing the dog mother coming to help the cat mother and her kittens.

[rebeccaconlon]

4:55 if morality was useful to the komodo dragon then it wouldn't have evolved to kill it's prey slowly... however in evolution it is beneficial due to energy conservation for the lizard... Morality is something that we've named for how we work with each other. Animals experience things so differently, they remember stimuli (hence classical conditioning) but tend not to got further. If you feel bad for another animal, that is not natural, the lion doesn't feel bad for the antelope it's eating, or the snake to the mouse that it's suffocating to death as it's swallowing it... etc. I doubt any other animal in nature does have empathy for different species (not including bred ones to get extra cuddles because water is coming out of your eyes - see classical conditioning)

[MsScarletwings]

I feel you, but I would propose we go even farther, since the egg and dairy industry *are* also the meat industry in many ways. Male chicks are ground up by the hundreds and male calves are auctioned for veal. Females are slaughtered once their production yields decrease, which happens long before the end of their natural lifespans.

I’m personally not a vegan actually, and I agree that there are some incredibly obnoxious vegans out there, but the radicalization, virtue-signaling warriors, and disasters like PETA aside, I do think this is the ideal we should be striving for if we care about the wellbeing of these animals.

[chrisose]

I was happy to hear you voice the truth of morality, empathy. Unfortunately I do not see enough atheists use this in response to the tired argument of "objective morals".

Having grown up around farms and hunting plus having no desire to take meat out of my diet (recognizing that the move of humans to less temperate zones facilitated the evolution to being omnivores) I do agree with the idea of treating all animals well even if they are to be used for food.
I always despised the practice of hunting with dogs as I see no need to terrorize the animal prior to the kill. I do not bow hunt for a similar reason since the animal does die instantly but instead bleeds to death. I also refuse to trophy hunt following on from the lessons of my father and grand father to never kill an animal that you are not going to eat (with the exception being self defense).

[LadyUnicornEJG]

I don't see the death/killing of animals for meat as inherently bad. Death is part of life, the end of it for the dying, And vegetarianism doesn't really do anything about the living conditions in and of itself (you can still be getting milk from cows living horrible lives, eggs from chickens in a factory farm, etc.). I do, absolutely, think we should change the way we treat the animals in the meantime, though. We should work to reduce their suffering while alive (including at the end of their life). And being able to do so will likely require using far _less_ meat and for that matter other animal products, as I don't think we could sustain the numbers we currently go through in a humane manner.

I'm not vegan, not vegetarian, not anything. Hell, not in a position to truly make those choices for moral/ethical reasons.

[orangekoalabro]

morality states everybody is a horrible person in some way

[kiwimarshall]

I FOUND IT I DID YES IT'S ETHER SILENT PARTNER (the song on his main channel)