>Here's where I'm at: I feel that an individual should do whatever they
>want, as long as it does not hurt others. If someone were to ask me why
>they should not hurt others, I wouldn't have a good answer for them. I'm
>not content to say "because hurting others is immoral". As you indicated
>earlier, that's a shortcut to understanding. But I can't come up with a
>better answer. Comments?
It would seem advantagous to propigate memes which can benifit you, even if
they only do so exclusively when held by others. <Don't harm others> would
seem to clearly fall into that category--a meme worth keeping strong, since
you could one day become the "other" in question.
The benifits to the host of continuning to propigate these memes would seem
to have to outweigh any personal costs incured by hosting them in order for
this group of memes to survive. The fact that such memes do survive and
flourish suggests that this is, in fact, the case.
-Prof. Tim