As for traitor, I think the only group here that can be betrayed is humanity as a whole, so as long as one believes theyāre doing something good for humanity I donāt think itād ever apply.
Hmm, that seems off to me? Unless you mean āsevere disloyalty to some group isnāt Ultimately Bad, even though it can be instrumentally badā. But to me it seems useful to have a concept of group betrayal, and to consider doing so to be generally bad, since I think group loyalty is often a useful norm thatās good for humanity as a whole.
Specifically, I think group-specific trust networks are instrumentally useful for cooperating to increase human welfare. For example, scientific research canāt be carried out effectively without some amount of trust among researchers, and between researchers and the public, etc. And you need some boundary for these groups thatās much smaller than all humanity to enable repeated interaction, mutual monitoring, and norm enforcement. When someone is severely disloyal to one of those groups they belong to, they undermine the mutual trust that enables future cooperation, which Iād guess is ultimately often bad for the world, since humanity as a whole depends for its welfare on countless such specialised (and overlapping) communities cooperating internally.
Itās not that Iām ignoring group loyalty, just that the word ātraitorā seems so strong to me that I donāt think thereās any smaller group here thatās owed that much trust. I could imagine a close friend calling me that, but not a colleague. I could imagine a researcher saying I ābetrayedā them if I steal and publish their results as my own after they consulted me, but thatās a much weaker word.
[Context: I come from a country where youāre labeled a traitor for having my anti-war political views, and I donāt feel such usage of this word has done much good for society here...]
Hmm, that seems off to me? Unless you mean āsevere disloyalty to some group isnāt Ultimately Bad, even though it can be instrumentally badā. But to me it seems useful to have a concept of group betrayal, and to consider doing so to be generally bad, since I think group loyalty is often a useful norm thatās good for humanity as a whole.
Specifically, I think group-specific trust networks are instrumentally useful for cooperating to increase human welfare. For example, scientific research canāt be carried out effectively without some amount of trust among researchers, and between researchers and the public, etc. And you need some boundary for these groups thatās much smaller than all humanity to enable repeated interaction, mutual monitoring, and norm enforcement. When someone is severely disloyal to one of those groups they belong to, they undermine the mutual trust that enables future cooperation, which Iād guess is ultimately often bad for the world, since humanity as a whole depends for its welfare on countless such specialised (and overlapping) communities cooperating internally.
Itās not that Iām ignoring group loyalty, just that the word ātraitorā seems so strong to me that I donāt think thereās any smaller group here thatās owed that much trust. I could imagine a close friend calling me that, but not a colleague. I could imagine a researcher saying I ābetrayedā them if I steal and publish their results as my own after they consulted me, but thatās a much weaker word.
[Context: I come from a country where youāre labeled a traitor for having my anti-war political views, and I donāt feel such usage of this word has done much good for society here...]