Thank you for the follow-up post. The distinction between empathy and the attribution of “moral agency” is a very helpful update and greatly clarifies the crux of your original argument.
That said, your conflict doesn’t seem to stem from simply attributing moral agency, but from an implicit assumption about the *utility function* that all moral agents *should* be optimizing.
If we model humans as self-optimizing agents, we can distinguish between:
1. Terminal Goals: The final, intrinsic objective. I would argue that for most humans, this approximates some form of “well-being” or “satisfaction” (happiness, to put it simply). It is the utility the system is trying to maximize.
2. Instrumental Goals: The subgoals an agent pursues because it believes they will help it achieve its terminal goal. This is where everything else comes in: strength (`Tsuyoku naritai`), competence, knowledge, wealth, social connection, validation, security, etc.
Your original post and this follow-up suggest that you have elevated a very specific instrumental goal—competence and personal growth—to the status of a universal terminal goal. The “disgust” or “disappointment” you feel when activating the “moral agency module” seems to be a reaction to agents who are not optimizing for *your* chosen instrumental goal.
The conclusion isn’t that you should “lower your standards” for yourself. The conclusion could be that treating someone as a “moral agent” doesn’t just mean demanding that they be responsible, but also recognizing that their responsibility is to their own, unique utility function, not to yours.
I believe Iran is definitely going to trie develop nuclear weapons as soon as they regain the capability to do so; I think it’s inevitable. Iran was already in a relatively stable equilibrium with Israel and the US by remaining at the threshold of nuclear weapons development, without actually possessing them (because that would provoke an all-out war), but with enough fissile material to build them in months or weeks if necessary (which is why Netanyahu has been claiming for over a decade that they are “weeks” away from having a bomb).
With this war, there is no viable way for them to return to the previous status quo. By assassinating the previous “moderate” government leadership and destroying a large part of Iran’s conventional military capabilities, the clear message the United States and Israel have sent to the most radical sectors of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (who have now taken control of Iran) is that remaining a threshold state does not guarantee them any kind of security.