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The most important consideration when making a moral decision is the foreseeable outcome of one's action. My moral compass, as it were, is my predictive capacity for the likely consequences of my actions. Armed with the conflicting goals of not doing harm to others and preventing harm to myself, I attempt to plot the future course that best satisfies both goals. I prefer for the total amount of harm done to be as small as possible, with the caveat that harm done to me and those I care about vastly outweighs similar harms to strangers or enemies.
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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