People Don't Have Consistent Normative Ethical Frameworks

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Back when I was an anarcho-capitalist, I justified my libertarian views on a deontological, rule-based ethical system that basically consisted of just one rule, that being the non-aggression principle.

[00:00:15]Liberty was my most strongly held value, and I applied my normative ethical stance at all times in every single facet of life and to every political issue.

[00:00:26]It struck me as strange that the vast majority of people seem to hold a whole bunch of seemingly contradictory normative ethical values.

[00:00:36]>> [snorts] >> So, I be In part, I became a libertarian because I noticed that most people arbitrarily switch their normative ethical assumptions in a seemingly ad hoc fashion depending on their mood or the or the particular issue under discussion.

[00:00:52]At one moment, they'll swear rage from a freedom-maximizing point of view, and the next and in the next, they'll reason from a utilitarian perspective.

[00:01:02]It really bothered me how people could be opposed to abortion on the grounds that it violated bodily autonomy while at the same time support socialized medicine and the repression of secession and freedom of association and segregation.

[00:01:19]I eventually came to the conclusion that there's no issue with being arbitrary philosophically, and there's no need to have a consistent normative ethical view of the world.

[00:01:30]I can just hate my enemies because they oppose what I personally value.

[00:01:36]Philosophers have come up with several different different types of utilitarianism.

[00:01:40]>> [music] >> There's act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, preference utilitarianism, and classical/hedonic utilitarianism, as well as negative utilitarianism, and two level utilitarianism.

[00:01:59]Reading up on the differences between these differing types of utilitarianism is definitely interesting, but it's interesting in the same way that looking at the distinctions between different Pokémon or >> [music] >> different MMA fighting styles is interesting.

[00:02:16]The vast vast majority people don't have consistent normative ethical perspective worldviews that they stand by.

[00:02:25]And this this used to annoy my autistic brain because simultaneously valuing freedom, harm reduction, and fairness to vague and arbitrary degrees struck me as incompatible.

[00:02:40]However, I eventually came to the conclusion that almost no one subscribes to a specific and unified normative ethical code in [music] the in the real world. They just value random things to various degrees.

[00:02:53]There's really no reason to justify your own values.

[00:02:57]In some according to some consistent standard, you can just have them and fight for them in in an egocentric fashion with no concern for being arbitrary.

[00:03:09]In politics, it's evidence that people hold a whole bunch of contradictory normative ethical positions.

[00:03:15]If you look at tech bros, a lot of them justify importing millions of high IQ skilled Indian immigrants on the basis of meritocracy and free markets, but these same people have nothing to say about the fact that Elon Musk's companies have received a great deal of financial assistance from the US federal government, which sort of contradicts the whole laissez-faire meritocracy ideal that the state should not interfere in the economy by picking winners and losers.

[00:03:45]Out of all the various disparate ideological groups [music] and radicals that I've encountered online. None of them have maintained a consistent normative ethical position, even if they claim that they do.

[00:04:04]Most people just value various things for egocentric reasons, and then and in an ad hoc fashion, they may justify what they value under some and under some consistent ethical stance.

[00:04:23]But in the long run, almost nobody is actually consistent.