If you will keep consuming a non-expirable household item forever, and if you have plenty of free space, why don’t you have a lifetime supply?
This may apply to soap, shampoo, toilet paper, detergent, paper towels, sponges, aluminum foil, trash bags, sandwich bags, most household cleaners, q-tips, rubber gloves, nails, screws, paper, matches, band-aids, light bulbs and (if these never expire) toothpaste, batteries, markers and pens, and many over-the-counter pharmaceuticals.
There are legitimate arguments against stockpiling, like ease of moving and expecting technology to improve. If you weigh these explicitly rather than just following the crowd, you’re much more likely to find the optimal supply.
I enjoyed and agreed with the first part of this article: I think the analogy of the random walk is an interesting way to think about progress in ethics. The section addressing moral relativism does raise a few questions, though.
Could you clarify what you meant by this? What is the difference between the terms, in context?
The Snowmass example has a few problems. To begin, religion =/= ethics. None of the Points of Agreement involve ethics in a meaningful way and they’re all vague, involving meaningless terms like “ultimate reality.” They’re essentially religious Barnum statements.
Finally, how can contemplation in the wilderness be an experiment in observing anything but individual human psychology? I would be more convinced by an experimental attempt at optimizing religion/ethics if it involved, for example, looking at how prevalence of certain ethical/religious beliefs in communities correlates with objective, measurable values such as happiness or wealth. Empiricism involves analyzing experimental results against a current model, not just other experiments.