(I will avoiding any discussion of brain stimming because I prefer to keep the discussion as concrete as practical. Brain stimming lacks concreteness because our species has almost no experience with brain stimming of humans.)
A young man’s spending his evenings clicking on cows is a sign that something is seriously wrong with him. You say as much when you write, “they’re not the kind of person you’d want your children to marry.”
In your hypothetical you do not give any details to suggest what might be wrong. If you had hypothesized for example that a 70-year-old man in a wheelchair living alone on government handouts spends his evenings clicking on cows, my guess is that you would feel less repugnance because you have been socialized to be sympathetic towards the disabled and the poor.
But human lives go seriously wrong all the time in ways that cannot be catalogued in a straightforward way into a bin labelled chronic illness, chronic poverty, substance abuse or such.
It has only been a century or two since part of the world has learned *not* to react with repugnance and moral condemnation towards, e.g., a person who has obvious signs of chronic illness, and even in the populations most inclined to be sympathetic, most people will react with moral condemnation toward personal failure when there are no signs as to the cause of that failure.
I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but you have given no indications in this post that you aren’t having the natural human reaction to a strong sign of severe personal failure (namely, moral condemnation).
You write, “I think if stimming was cheap and easy, most people would do it”. If most people would do it, then it is not a sign of a serious personal failure as much as a sign of a serious societal failure. In any case, I don’t see how it sheds any useful light on the matter whether or not you feel moral repugnance.
(I will avoiding any discussion of brain stimming because I prefer to keep the discussion as concrete as practical. Brain stimming lacks concreteness because our species has almost no experience with brain stimming of humans.)
A young man’s spending his evenings clicking on cows is a sign that something is seriously wrong with him. You say as much when you write, “they’re not the kind of person you’d want your children to marry.”
In your hypothetical you do not give any details to suggest what might be wrong. If you had hypothesized for example that a 70-year-old man in a wheelchair living alone on government handouts spends his evenings clicking on cows, my guess is that you would feel less repugnance because you have been socialized to be sympathetic towards the disabled and the poor.
But human lives go seriously wrong all the time in ways that cannot be catalogued in a straightforward way into a bin labelled chronic illness, chronic poverty, substance abuse or such.
It has only been a century or two since part of the world has learned *not* to react with repugnance and moral condemnation towards, e.g., a person who has obvious signs of chronic illness, and even in the populations most inclined to be sympathetic, most people will react with moral condemnation toward personal failure when there are no signs as to the cause of that failure.
I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but you have given no indications in this post that you aren’t having the natural human reaction to a strong sign of severe personal failure (namely, moral condemnation).
You write, “I think if stimming was cheap and easy, most people would do it”. If most people would do it, then it is not a sign of a serious personal failure as much as a sign of a serious societal failure. In any case, I don’t see how it sheds any useful light on the matter whether or not you feel moral repugnance.