For example, if their argument is that it is impossible to judge another culture’s activities as being ‘evil’, I offer up the idea that it’s part of my culture to repeatedly thwap people I disagree with on the head with a stick, and thus they have no justification for telling me to stop.
Not being able to judge another culture’s activities as intrinsically evil isn’t the same as having to like everything everyone else does.
I don’t think your “stick test” is worth anything: the person being hit can invoke desire utilitarianism as their justification and still not claim that your action is “evil”.
OpenCog is open source anyway: anything Goertzel can do can be done by anyone else. If Goertzel didn’t think it was safe to run, what’s stopping someone else from running it?