In which philosophy tries to understand how normal people think about morality.
Philosophers, bless them, are trying to understand how normal people think about morality.
Normal people, as you may have heard, hang out on the internet. And what is the internet’s biggest trove of everyday moral dilemmas? Why, it’s Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole?” forum!
So, why not comb through millions of comments there to find out how people make moral decisions?
This might sound like a joke, but it’s actually been the past four years of Daniel Yudkin’s life. As he was doing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, Yudkin thought about how moral psychology and moral philosophy — his fields of research — mostly focus on hypothetical, contextless scenarios involving strangers.

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Super fascinating article (though the writing was tedious as heck). I think when we are encouraged to value a utilitarian perspective over the sanctity of the individual perspective, there isn't an actual moral fabric to rest on or start from. It's my understanding that ethics are handed down from other people, and morality depends on individual perspective & choice.
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I love the premise of "Am I the Asshole?", but often the answer seems to be that both parties are the assholes.
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I'm convinced that bots are posting stories/questions in forums and subs like AITA so that they can gather insight into how humans would respond in certain scenarios or situations. Like you clearly see multiple posts a week that seems weirdly similar with just a few different details. It's a way to gather reactions/responses/interpretation data. Or I'm just high.
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Very interesting, using Reddit as an object of study on morality, I haven't understood everything completely, but it makes a lot of things clear, largely how morality works today and how important relationships are for people to make decisions.
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Wow... taking from the bottom of the barrel.
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A great way to study the morality of commies, and not much else.
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Reddit users are no normal people, in fact they are living an illusion online
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I don't think reddit users are "normal people".
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