Just how smart is an octopus?

> why are there ethical/moral truths?

I'd say yes, for me, as long as I will them. Or, put differently, they're decisions more than discoveries. Decisions based on discoveries, but ultimately decisions nonetheless. I consider murder evil because I decided it is. I can explain my reasons but even the ideas I have from others I made my own by thinking them through, so they're my reasons. I agree to the law that makes murder illegal because I consider murder wrong, I don't consider murder wrong just because it's illegal. There is clearly some overlap there and some amount of rationalization, but that's what I strive for. Vet everything, repeatedly, kick my own tires. If it's in my pocket I either have to make it mine or get rid of it. I don't to leave the world the clusterfuck of second-hand half-truths I started out as, if I can avoid it. Even my own errors would be an improvement.

> There are probably statistical truths. Such as generally don't kill people.

I don't know anything about statistics but I know that that's not how statistics work :P

Ultimately science is of no help here. Seeing the world more clearly gives us better tools to make decisions, but those can't make those decisions for us. They can't even try. Science can tell you how much weight a bridge can bear, not whether you should build or cross or burn it.

From your previous comment:

> Every ethics system that we have is a might makes right. People need to realize this.

I absolutely agree. The disagreement is mostly about what constitutes might. For example, I genuinely think slavery, all sorts of exploitation and parasitism, harm and hurt people on both ends. Always, without fail, quick or slow it will do the work. In the same vein I think obedience is fit for children, not for adults.

More importantly, I think "might" or "power" are very crude words. I like to differentiate between power as in "not being powerless" (the German word for unconscious, "ohnmächtig", which literally means "without any power", gives a hint of that), and power over others. One I consider positive (and it's not zero-sum either, to the contrary), the other very much negative.

I think only a weak person, someone compensating something, would seek power over others, or not look for ways to responsibly get rid of it once it was trusted upon them (by becoming a parent or a million other perfectly legitimate situations).

Last but not least, and the universe "has morality" only in the sense that I and others in it insist they do. Morals only make sense between "persons", however you want to define those, so of course the universe is amoral.

> What leads you to believe that there is a universal truth especially in light of the fact that the universe does little to actively preserve life

As for universal truth, well, there is something here, something is going on. None of us can ever know it completely, and none of us can know it the same way, but it's still the same thing we have different views about. I can't prove this, but I'm at ease with this assumption for now. Worked out so far, on my scale.

But truth and morals are apples and oranges, and as for morals, exactly because the universe, certainly empty space and a lot of planetoids, is so very hostile to life (as we know it) I think we should stop following narcissistic pied pipers who in the end get nothing out of it either into all sorts of dead ends. Just because why not.

But also:

> the fact that the universe does little to actively preserve life

What does "actively" even mean? What "actions" would an universe do? We are part of the universe, do our actions count towards the actions of the universe?

It passively sustains us, for a while. Which, for all we know, might mean the universe is as busy as a one-legged person in an ass-kicking contest. Should it shoot food from space at starving people? We have the sun, that people still starve is our doing at this point. When I called the universe and outer space hostile to life, I was harsh. The universe is rich in elements and bursting with energy. It bombards our planet with so much sun light we get skin cancer from lying on the beach for looking better to others, while people starve and wars are waged. And we call the universe hostile to life? No. Even accepting the heat death of the universe, we're clearly projecting.

How does a parent actively support their child becoming an adult? What about supporting them being an adult? At some point, "active" becomes an oxymoron. So, if you actively sustain life, then what is the life doing? Don't get me wrong, just laboring to live is not a desirable life to me either - but "just living" is not even life, it's just hysteria in a void or a mall which are the same thing.

Some or all of the above may be BS, I admit I layed it on as thick as I could. For better or worse, this is how I see it :)

Call me a skeptic, but can we trust nutritionists?

A few years ago foods like eggs and coffee were poison. You should eat margarine instead of butter, now it is the other way around.

This science branch seems to attract charlatans.

I think of alien abduction stories and related horror fiction as our species' fear of someone else doing to us what we do to animals in factory farms.

> Realize that all animal ethics are entirely manmade and foreign to the background of the Universe's amorality.

Alternatively, some scientists and philosophers believe that ethics predate human beings - that they exist in many if not all social animals. In other words, some basic ethical emotions evolved. They then form the basis for our more sophisticated ethical and legal systems.

Also, while you can argue that at some level the universe is "amoral" - it's just particles and laws of physics, right? - you can see that logic requires similar ethical systems in all social creatures. Things like "don't harm others, reciprocate help that you receive, help your elders, protect the young, etc." At some level, those derive logically for social organisms. So one could argue that such ethical laws are fixed and given in the same way that higher mathematics is fixed and given.

The goal of descriptivists is to collect information about how words are being used currently and to compile a dictionary based on that information, so what you said about viral memes is compatible with descriptivism.

The best argument for prescriptivism has less to do with authority and more to do with people who have an interest in being able to communicate clearly. A better word than "prescriptivism" might be "subscriptivism". Presumably, we subscribe to the normal rules of the English language so that we mitigate miscommunication.

Purpose matters. The person who demands that everyone use "octopuses" is just an elitist asshole. The science institution, which demands that its members conform to a precise standard of language, is just doing its job.