Your Conscience Is Not A Moral Oracle

I’ve previously outlined three ways we might fix cultural drift. But each way seems quite a big ask, and I’ve been pondering what is our biggest obstacle here. What I’ve come up with is this: we will need to learn to stop treating conscience as if it were direct evidence on morality.Evidence can be more vs less direct. For example, in a murder trial, direct evidence may include bodies, bullets, or videos, while testimony of people about these things, or by those who saw the murder, is indirect. Still less direct is testimony on what an accused murderer said. And far less direct are rumors that spread on the murder and who might be responsible.When we use gossip and crowds to enforce norms, such as in cancel culture, we rely more on indirect evidence. Which often goes badly. So we’ve organized law to focus on direct evidence. Judges are to wait to rule until after they hear the most direct evidence available, and to mostly judge for themselves, rather than deferring to crowds. This…