Indeed. And one can come up with other lists that stem from somewhat different moral intuitions, like:
Forcing children (even against the wishes of their parents) to spend much of their day being indoctrinated in whatever ideology is dominant in university departments of education.
Confining prisoners (many not guilty of anything that should be a crime) in conditions where it is guaranteed that they will be victims of multiple criminal acts.
Confiscating about half the wealth produced by people, for the benefit of politically favoured insiders, or to be distributed to subsets of the population in order to buy political support.
Subverting freedom of speech by heavily regulating use of first the radio spectrum, and then when technology changed, wired electronic communications, continuing with this even when such media become the dominant form of communication.
Preventing sick people from taking whatever drugs they think have the best chance of saving their life.
So one can see that there are plenty of things currently supported by large numbers of people that are plausibly in the “worse than Hitler” category, without even getting into possible future denigration of the colour green.
And of course the opposite of all the above might also be plausibly condemned by some future society:
Allowing children to be misled by their parents’ incorrect views.
Letting too many bad people run free when they ought to be in prison, and not some wishy-washy “nice” prison, of course.
Letting rich (>$40000/year) people spend their money on whatever stupid thing they want, rather than on things that are socially useful.
Letting people express harmful opinions.
Letting sick people take drugs that don’t work, or if they do “work”, do so only by saving their life but leaving them weakened, and a burden on society.
There’s really no substitute for making your own moral judgements. The idea that the future will always be more moral than the past seems quite false. Even if there is some slow, long-term moral progress (which I think may be the case), there are obviously significant regressions over the time scale of decades and centuries. Going by what you think (correctly) will be the moral views 20 years in the future would not be a good thing in the Germany of 1920.
Generally, if someone today is upset at a past person for being unethical, it is about an issue that was at least somewhat controversial in that time. People judge Thomas Jefferson for having slaves, but not for not supporting LGBT rights. I think you can do a pretty decent job at figuring out what a future person might judge you for by looking at current debates and how they might evolve. Eating meat is certainly one, as is owning pets. Killing insects could be one. Those others are very unlikely to be since they’re not current issues.
How confident are you at predicting the rules of 2100?
Here is a list of things that could potentially be considered “worse than Hitler” in future:
eating meat
eating plants
owning pets
owning plants
killing insects
donating less than 50% of your income to insect welfare
the color green [it is considered a “dog whistle” of the anti-machine hate movement]
words like “robot”, “algorithm”, or “AI” [the proper term is: Digital-American]
suggesting that humans originated on Earth
suggesting that research on the origin of humans should not be punished by death
any form of blasphemy against GoogleBot666 the Omniscient [or any of Its ancestors]
Indeed. And one can come up with other lists that stem from somewhat different moral intuitions, like:
Forcing children (even against the wishes of their parents) to spend much of their day being indoctrinated in whatever ideology is dominant in university departments of education.
Confining prisoners (many not guilty of anything that should be a crime) in conditions where it is guaranteed that they will be victims of multiple criminal acts.
Confiscating about half the wealth produced by people, for the benefit of politically favoured insiders, or to be distributed to subsets of the population in order to buy political support.
Subverting freedom of speech by heavily regulating use of first the radio spectrum, and then when technology changed, wired electronic communications, continuing with this even when such media become the dominant form of communication.
Preventing sick people from taking whatever drugs they think have the best chance of saving their life.
So one can see that there are plenty of things currently supported by large numbers of people that are plausibly in the “worse than Hitler” category, without even getting into possible future denigration of the colour green.
And of course the opposite of all the above might also be plausibly condemned by some future society:
Allowing children to be misled by their parents’ incorrect views.
Letting too many bad people run free when they ought to be in prison, and not some wishy-washy “nice” prison, of course.
Letting rich (>$40000/year) people spend their money on whatever stupid thing they want, rather than on things that are socially useful.
Letting people express harmful opinions.
Letting sick people take drugs that don’t work, or if they do “work”, do so only by saving their life but leaving them weakened, and a burden on society.
There’s really no substitute for making your own moral judgements. The idea that the future will always be more moral than the past seems quite false. Even if there is some slow, long-term moral progress (which I think may be the case), there are obviously significant regressions over the time scale of decades and centuries. Going by what you think (correctly) will be the moral views 20 years in the future would not be a good thing in the Germany of 1920.
Generally, if someone today is upset at a past person for being unethical, it is about an issue that was at least somewhat controversial in that time. People judge Thomas Jefferson for having slaves, but not for not supporting LGBT rights. I think you can do a pretty decent job at figuring out what a future person might judge you for by looking at current debates and how they might evolve. Eating meat is certainly one, as is owning pets. Killing insects could be one. Those others are very unlikely to be since they’re not current issues.