So, what are those things that at least some human cultures view as INHERENTLY immoral, that is, acts they would still think of as immoral even if no other consequences of that behavior were to occur?

Here’s my attempt so far at making a comprehensive list of things that at least some cultures view as intrinsically wrong. Note that many of these items are related or overlapping. What am I missing from the list?

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1. UNFAIRNESS

• Injustice (e.g., helping a bad person avoid punishment, or undermining someone’s just reward)

• Inequality (e.g., causing society’s resources to be concentrated among just a few while everyone else is poor, or treating people differently based on gender or skin color)

• Abuse of authority (e.g., nepotism, or favoritism, or those in power giving rewards to those they like best instead of those who deserve it, or those who are given a certain position of authority not carrying out the duties of that position, or carrying out the duties poorly or in a self-interested manner)

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2. HARM

• Harm (e.g., causing others suffering or purposely reducing the happiness of others)

• Murder (e.g., ending the life of another person, including in some cultures, animals, or allowing others to die needlessly)

• Genocide (e.g., the harming or killing of a specific, targeted group)

• Stealing (e.g., taking something that belongs to someone else or that should be no one’s property)

• Destruction (e.g., damaging or annihilating things of value, like ruining the environment, destroying ancient or beautiful artifacts, instigating societal collapse, or hunting a species to extinction)

• Slander (e.g., speaking ill of others, or gossiping by spreading true but negative or harmful information about other people)

• Subjugation (e.g., controlling the body, mind, or choices of others, or restricting freedom)

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3. DISRESPECT

• Disrespect of authority (e.g., being rude to your parents or disobeying your leaders)

• Disrespect of the vulnerable (e.g., treating people badly or not showing respect for members of a subjugated or vulnerable or oppressed group, or not paying proper respect to those who are victims, or disrespecting people living under hard conditions)

• Disrespect of the dead (e.g., digging up a grave, selling a dead body, necrophilia, cannibalism, speaking badly of the dead)

• Disrespect of god or gods (e.g., blasphemy, taking God’s name in vain, desecrating a place of worship, violating a commandment such as doing work on a day when work is forbidden, worshiping a carved idol instead of worshiping God, not engaging in prayer or thanks, questioning God’s nature, or God’s choices, or God’s existence)

• Practicing other faiths (e.g., worshipping alternative gods, engaging in superstitions, engaging in practices or rituals of other religions)

• Rule-breaking (e.g., violating the laws of your country or the rules of your culture, even if those laws are arbitrary or pointless)

• Violating tradition (e.g., non-conformity, or refusing to engage in the traditions of your culture, or flouting traditional roles or norms)

• Disrespect of opinions (e.g., not taking into account the opinions or desires of other people, falsely believing you know more or are wiser than others)

• Defiling (e.g., causing others to be impure, or causing others to take immoral actions, or causing others to leave your religion)

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4. IMPURITY

• Food impurity (e.g., eating certain “forbidden”, “impure” or “disgusting” foods)

• Sexual impurity (e.g., sex before marriage, bestiality, incest, sex with forbidden people, or performing forbidden sexual acts)

• Bodily impurity (e.g., uncleanliness, or making certain disallowed alterations to the body, face, or hair, or taking drugs or intoxicants)

• Social impurity (e.g., spending time with others who are thought to be bad or impure, such as murderers or members of an outcast group)

• Unnaturalness (e.g., engaging in behaviors or social relationships that are viewed as unnatural or in violation of the natural order, or “playing god”, such as by trying to modify natural things)

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5. DISLOYALITY

• Betrayal (e.g., refusing to help someone who has often helped you or with whom you have a long history)

• Familial rejection (e.g., disowning a family member or refusing to help a family member in need or choosing to benefit a non-family member over a family member)

• Infidelity (e.g., to cheat on a romantic partner when in a monogamous relationship)

• Treason (e.g., rejecting your in-group, or bad mouthing your in-group, or harming your in-group, or leaving your in-group for another group, running away in battle)

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6. DISHONESTY

• Lying (e.g., being dishonest, or spreading false information, or allowing others to come to false conclusions)

• Perjury (e.g., claiming that someone did something they didn’t do in order to help yourself)

• Promise breaking (e.g., to violate a contract or go back on a promise)

• Cheating (e.g., getting an unfair advantage, violating rules that everyone else has to follow, or giving what one person has earned to a different person instead)

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7. BAD CHARACTER

• Irresponsibility (e.g., failing to take care of your children, or do your job, or keep your promises)

• Inaction (e.g., not intervening when something bad is happening and you have the power to stop it)

• Wastefulness (e.g., letting food or resources go to waste, using more than is needed, or not making use of your talent or potential)

• Faithlessness (e.g., not believing in God or gods, not believing in the existence of good and evil, not believing that there is such a thing as moral being morality)

• Ignorance (e.g., stupidity, irrationality, lack of knowledge, narrow-mindedness, intolerance of other opinions)

• Selfishness (e.g., not caring about other people, or choosing the benefit of oneself over the benefit of one’s community, or refusing to help others who are in need when you have a lot of resources, or rejecting being part of any community, excessively promoting oneself, or bragging)

• Recklessness (e.g., allowing things of value to come into danger due to lack of forethought or caring, taking excessive risks)

• Sinful emotion (e.g., excessive anger, lust, greed, jealousy, pride, laziness, arrogance, materialistic desire)

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EXAMPLES OF MORAL SYSTEMS

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The Ten Commandments forbid items from 8 of these sub-categories:

• Practicing other faiths (“thou shalt have no other gods before me”)

• Disrespect of God (“thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images…not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain…remember the sabbath day”)

• Disrespect of authority (“honor thy father and thy mother”)

• Murder (“thou shalt not kill”)

• Infidelity (“thou shalt not commit adultery”)

• Stealing (“thou shalt not steal”)

• Perjury (“thou shalt not bear false witness”)

• Sinful emotion (“thou shalt not covet”)

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The golden rule (“Do to others what you want them to do to you”) doesn’t directly forbid any of these items, but making reasonable guesses for what most people would want done to them, it likely ends up forbidding at least some items from every one of the high-level categories above.

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The “Five Precepts” for lay followers of some traditions of Buddhism ask you to refrain from these sub-categories:

• Murder (“I undertake the training rule to abstain from killing.”)

• Stealing (“I undertake the training rule to abstain from taking what is not given.”)

• Sexual impurity (“I undertake the training rule to avoid sexual misconduct.”)

• Lying and Perjury (“I undertake the training rule to abstain from false speech.”)

• Bodily impurity (“I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness.”)

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As I understand it, for some (but not all) Sikhs, the main sub-categories of religious prohibitions are:

• Bodily impurity (cutting hair, taking intoxicants)

• Practicing other faiths (e.g., eating meat of animals killed in a ritualistic manner, engaging in superstitious rituals, and animal sacrifice)

• Sinful emotion (obsessive greed/materialistic desire)

• Selfishness (living a life disconnected from society as a recluse or non-family oriented living, bragging)

• Slander

• Lying

• Infidelity

This piece was first written on April 18, 2018, and first appeared on my website on September 15, 2025.

Thinking along these lines, each of us can divide all things that exist or seem to exist into a few categories:

1. Those things that exist in physical reality that also have a representation in my simulation. An example of this would be some particular car that I see on the street. There are atoms (or quantum wave functions at least) in the universe that correspond to this car, and there is a visual experience in my simulation that represents this car. After I look at this car and walk away, my simulation continues to have the concept of this car, at least until I have forgotten about it. So the car exists in my simulation, but it also exists in physical reality as a bunch of atoms (though there is no dividing line in physical reality between where the car atoms end and not-car atoms begin, that dividing line too is a property of the simulation). Color is another thing in our simulation that corresponds to physical reality, but is of course only a representation of it. There is no “redness” in space, redness is something that we experience. What there is in space is electromagnetic radiation, some of which produces an experience of redness in our simulations after it hits the simulation/reality interface that we call our eyes.
2. Those things that exist in physical reality but have no representation in my simulation. This would include a particular planet in another galaxy that I’ve never heard of. Although I have the concept of planets existing, this particular planet has no representation in my simulation of reality.
3. Those things that exist in our simulation but are not representations of specific things in physical reality. An example of this would be a hallucination (sure, there are bunnies in physical reality, but that particular bunny that you think is laughing at you now and doing head stands doesn’t actually correspond to any set of atoms). Perhaps a more interesting example from this category though would be impurity. A dish is unclean, Jewish custom says, if it has touched both milk and meat. This contamination property continues to hold even after the plate is scrubbed completely clean, even if every atom of milk and meat are removed. Suppose that a man who lives by this system of thought is given a plate, and then he is told that it was recently used to eat both meat and milk. Regardless of whether that claim is true, so long as he believes it the plate will suddenly gain the property of uncleanness in his simulation. He may experience the sense of this uncleanness quite strongly, and the thought of eating from that plate may even cause him to feel disgust.

One thing that is odd about living inside a simulation (as we each are), is that aspects of the simulation that don’t correspond to anything in physical reality can feel just as real as those that do correspond. For instance, someone I know once had a schizophrenic period where they became convinced that certain objects in their kitchen were, in fact, quite evil. This evilness was completely convincing and quite overwhelming. But what does it mean for an object to be evil? Evilness surely is not a property of atoms, quantum wave functions, or physical objects, but a property of representations of things inside our simulations. Normally we only associate this property with intelligent beings, but when the simulation goes haywire it can get associated with inanimate things. Just as we think some particular clown nose is red (i.e. our simulation contains the experience of redness which our brain links to its concept of that clown nose), we could end up thinking that some particular bar of soap is evil (i.e. our simulation contains the experience of evilness which our brain links to its concept of that soap).

Influences: Michael Vassar