The Golden Rule ? Sense or Bullshit?

[genkaus]

You know, I notice that people use the word "moral" very liberally. I may think someone has no morals (e.g., in honour killing, i say the dad has no morals, actually he clearly does, it's just different from mine, he likely thinks i have no morals as well). So because the golden rule does not leave out what people think, i think it's still in play. By itself it isn't moral because some people have warped sense of morality, but it fosters the environment you'd want to live in.

So for example, I wouldn't say murder is ok, even if i really want A to kill B. because then, I may end up being murdered as well. So part of it is self-preservation, I think.

You are using the word pretty liberally yourself, since you refer to your own morality to judge someone else's as warped. As for the golden rule, it is moral, by itself, because it prescribes what you should or should not do.

We don't because if too many people do it, the society would not function optimally. Your first example comes with a very important disclaimer which is "as long as it doesn't bite you in the ass". How far into the future are you looking when considering this? 10 hours from now? 20h? 10 years? 50 years? So if everyone went out today, and manipulated people into what they want, let's go for an extreme example and say con people into taking fake cancer treatments and charging them lots of money for it. If we say this is moral, and more and more people start doing it, the next time you're sick, you cannot trust anyone to treat you. You'll have to spend a lot of time researching what is real and what isn't. the same would apply, to a lesser extent, in less extreme cases.

You've given no evidence to support your assertion that "if too many people do it, society would not function optimally". As far as we know, too many people in the world regularly lie, manipulate and take what they can if they can get away with it. Haven't you ever lied in an interview?

And your example here is a strawman. My given condition was "if it doesn't bite you in the ass". The timeframe is irrelevant. Even if thereis possibility of that happening on your deathbed (or putting you there), you should consider it. So, your given example doesn't apply in such a world.

Idk what to address here. I have conceded that you don't follow the golden rule all the time, so maybe you follow it while making 50% of your decisions. I don't think it's realistic to say you can be successful and not subscribe to it (do you mean at all?), i could say you can be unsuccessful and not subscribe to it. I mean both are baseless assertions. i think most of us have been in situations where while making a decision, we go "if i were in his position, what would i want me to do?". That's a variation of the golden rule, principle is the same though.

The problem is, one assertion does have more support for it than the other. The golden rule is a rule based on empathy, i.e. your capacity to understand someone else's emotions and act on them. So someone incapable of empathy would be the clearest example of someone who rarely, if ever, lives by the golden rule.

I'm not sure how scientific this study is, but here is it anyway:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovic...reat-ceos/
http://boingboing.net/2012/12/31/which-p...e-mos.html

According to this, the incidence of psychopathy among CEO's is four times that of general popuation. It also seems that psychopathy is more common in jobs associated with traditional ideas of success, money and power. That's because a lot of these jobs indicative of success and power require traits indicative of psychopathy - such as making objective, clinical decisions without consideration for anyone else's feelings. Which would indicate that as far as money, power and success are concerned, the less often you apply the golden rule, the more likely you are to succeed.

1. the rule of trade doesn't apply here.

It does if I go for the option of holding out for a reward.

But you did follow the golden rule. you want an environment where if you were to lose your money, you'd rather they take it and teach you a lesson. That's how you want to be treated, so you act that way to affect others into treating you that way.

First of all, that would the interpretation of the golden rule that is rarely applied. In fact, most people argue against that interpretation because another example of the same application would be "I want to be murdered if I'm ever stupid enough to walk down a dark street - so I should murder anyone who does".

Second of all, the point you were actually making was how your given application of golden rule is more beneficial and my example is simply to show that it isn't.

The trade rule only applies once you start charging for your service, because then it becomes a trade. But you do see how it'd be problematic if we started charging for everything, right?

Nope. And it would be a mistake to think that the trade rule means always to be paid in money.

Again, you're still using the golden rule here. You want to be treated a certain way, so you treat others that way and successfully fostered the environment where others will treat you the same way.

Except, the golden rule here is a tertiary motive at best. The primary motive is the monetary benefit and the secondary motive is teaching him a lesson. My actions would've been the same even if I had no desire or any real expectation of effecting a change in environment. The golden rule is an optional extra. And that is the point. I'm saying that rather than treating the golden rule as the primary, we can gain greater benefit by applying the trade rule instead. And unlike this example, if the two rules are in conflict, it'd still be beneficial to give precedence to the trade rule.

And by the way, once again, this is not the interpretation people seem to favor. If any and all forms of the golden rule are acceptable, then I choose the economic interpretation - "He who has the gold makes the rules".