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I think the OP is concerned with the question "how do I create incentive-compatible moral codes", not "how do I behave given a moral code". In economics theres lots of cases when these two questions are very different questions in a pretty counterintuitive way (except with "laws" replacing "moral codes")


I interpreted it that way too.

Ultimately, you can try and build a perfect theoretical moral framework, but if it disagrees too much with how people feel about it in aggregate, it won't take (and you'll do more wrong than good by trying to force-feed it to people). It's e.g. one of the bigger failing of communism - it turned out that the concept of private ownership is close to fundamental to humans[0], so the then-new system failed as soon as people with guns stopped enforcing it.

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[0] - Don't know why, but my pet hypothesis is that it's fundamental to each of us to be able to think about some things as "it's mine, I control it, I'm responsible for what happens to it". Might have been necessary to survival - if there are things your life depends on, you want to have absolute say about what happens to them, so that they are always there when you need them the most.




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