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If this worked it would be a prejudice detector. I find that I'm not entirely prejudice-free, choosing the death of adults over children and animals over humans. But I don't think I'd be comfortable with a car auto-pilot choosing between humans, or failing to choose life for humans over animals.

Software and legal codes are going to collide in interesting ways here.




How do you define a “moral” such that it’s not a form of prejudice (“pre-judgement”)?


Well, prejudice is not the same as pre judge. The former has a very negative, often racist or discriminatory connotation (I mean discriminatory in a dehumanizing fashion) Prejudice is often defined with an element of non-rational decision making.

Pre judging on the other hand can be very ration. This can certainly be the case in well-considered moral principles. is a very different thing.


Sounds to me like you've defined "prejudice" as "pre-judging that I think is bad" and "pre-judge" as "pre-judging that I think is reasonable". Also it sounds like you've defined "ration(al)" as "things which I agree with"?


I really don't know where you get this impression of what I wrote. What did I write that makes you think I define "rational" as "things I agree with?" You seem to be reading too much into what I wrote to arrive at the worst possible interpretation. You are bordering on personal attacks as I take it as insulting for you to imply that I harbor that type of facile mindset. I would really like to know what gave you that impression from what was a fairly straightforward comment.

In any case, to clarify with > 1,000 year old evidence in support of the semantic distinction :

I am defining prejudice as distinctly different from pre-judging. Both the current definition and more recent (600+ years) of etymology support "prejudice" as a word connoting a frequently negative sentiment (spite, contempt) judgment that is typically not grounded in an evidence-based decision making process. [0] Current phonemic similarities between "pre-judging" are not indicative of closely matched meaning.

There is some closer etymological similarity between the verb form of prejudice and prejudge, the verb form "to prejudice" has a different meaning than the noun, much more of a legal sense to it that is still used today. "Don't prejudice the jury" for example. Its noun form differs significant in its mostly non-legal meaning.

Going back further to Latin roots [0 also] shows it to still have a negative connotation of "harm".

Pre-judging on the other hand does not have to take a negative form and mostly (for me at least) doesn't. It and can be done on the basis of limited evidence or past experience/expertise, with the healthy practice of revising those judgements as additional evidence becomes available.

To verge into being pedantic, prejudice might be considered a pernicious form of prejudgment, but in my own mind I tend to place them in different semantic categories all together.

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/prejudice#etymonline_v_19410




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