Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Reelya]

The current conversation about measuring the value of people is pretty sad so I'm going to try and switch gears.

For me this question is 100% clear. Because for me doing nothing is still an action. If you decide to pull, one dies. If you decide not to pull, ten die. Being able to claim "Moral Superiority" for not "Actively" killing someone means jack shit when 1o times more death is caused then necessarily.

These sort of thought experiments are boring. I much prefer ones where the 1 person is your significant other, and the 10 are random people you've never met. Let's take the facelessness out of the victims and then some real morality might come into play.

That was my Scenario 2, read my post.

[lorb]

The point is that assigning a simple number as 'worth' is meaningless.

This is not a rational discussion. (Sorry for the broken link.)

[Criptfeind]

403 error. And stop using links for your arguments.

[Realmfighter]

These sort of thought experiments are boring. I much prefer ones where the 1 person is your significant other, and the 10 are random people you've never met. Let's take the facelessness out of the victims and then some real morality might come into play.

Person I love. The death of someone I don't know barely effects me or my happiness but someone I love dying would have a massive detrimental effect on my life.

[kaijyuu]

These sort of thought experiments are boring. I much prefer ones where the 1 person is your significant other, and the 10 are random people you've never met. Let's take the facelessness out of the victims and then some real morality might come into play.

Person I love. The death of someone I don't know barely effects me or my happiness but someone I love dying would have a massive detrimental effect on my life.

So your personal happiness comes above others' lives?

[lorb]

In germany the wife of the president sued google because the autocompletion function of google puts prostitute after her name. Does anyone think she should have a right to have this removed? You can read more about it here.

[Realmfighter]

So your personal happiness comes above others' lives?

I've spent five minutes just looking at this and I'm just going to answer yes because I need to start this somewhere.

People I care about have more value then people I don't. This is the only answer I can come up with to justify not killing myself out of grief. When someone you love dies, you feel sad and grieve. Not grieving or even feeling anything but the bare minimum of sadness to feel implies that you value that person less then people you care for. If every random person is just as valuable as your loved ones then how can you justify crying at a funeral and yet living a normal life knowing that every day thousands die in more suffering then you could even imagine?

[Criptfeind]

Piff. Google does not directly control that. What can they do?

[lorb]

Google does have control over it. They censor out words like "torrent" and others that could lead to copyright infringement.

Edit: From the link I posted:

Google lawyer Kent Walker has freely admitted that the company deletes certain terms. "We will prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete," he wrote in a 2010 statement.

[Criptfeind]

What I meant was that they did not purposely put it like that. Perhaps I was unclear.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

She should just deal with it. You are inevitably going to share your name with someone you don't care for. I know of one other person with my name, and I hate that guy because he went to the same doctor I did and our appointments always got mixed up. I've never even seen him, but I hate him for that.

[kaijyuu]

So your personal happiness comes above others' lives?

I've spent five minutes just looking at this and I'm just going to answer yes because I need to start this somewhere.

People I care about have more value then people I don't. This is the only answer I can come up with to justify not killing myself out of grief. When someone you love dies, you feel sad and grieve. Not grieving or even feeling anything but the bare minimum of sadness to feel implies that you value that person less then people you care for. If every random person is just as valuable as your loved ones then how can you justify crying at a funeral and yet living a normal life knowing that every day thousands die in more suffering then you could even imagine?

See this is much more interesting with difficult questions rather than easy ones

You can justify not crying about the thousands that die by realizing the difference between loving and caring about someone, and having a moral obligation to them. You don't have a moral obligation to cry at a funeral; any funeral. However, when our moral value systems actually come into play, then you can start considering others you don't nominally "care" about.

So in essence, your concern is feeling obligation to feel grief for others. I'd argue you don't have that obligation. Merely the obligation to consider their lives and happiness valuable when they becomes threatened.

[da_nang]

You conveniently and dishonestly deleted the conclusion of that argument.

Are you denying that what could potentially be a lifetime of suffering may be worse than death? Every person who has ever committed suicide would likely disagree with you.

In the sense of damage done, yes. Damage being physical damage that can be somewhat quantified. Emotional and psychological trauma is pretty much impossible to quantify. Some more people are just more jaded, I guess.

There is no such thing as a non-lethal attack. A punch to the chest can be fatal, as can a careless shove, a tazer or a bit of pepper spray.

The point of self defense is to stop your aggressor and walk away unharmed or at least less harmed. The single fastest and most effective way to stop an aggressor is to cause trauma to the brain, spinal column, respiratory system or the core of the circulatory system. Anything less puts you at increased risk.

Right, because you could also just strap someone to a chair and leave him there for a week to die of dehydration. I meant non-lethal in the common sense variety. Less-lethal in Wikipedia sense.

Do you shoot to kill or shoot to debilitate? Two very different things.

But you know what? this does not matter at all to this discussion. because we a talking about a device that is most likely even less lethal than even a careless shove. And one that is comes into effect after all other forms of self defense have failed.

No, it does not prove a point because your straw man isn't even remotely related to the topic at hand.

The topic at hand is this one, since I chose to respond to it just like you may write a letter to the editor about a specific part you've read in an article. (call it a derailment, if you wish):

A woman is well within her right to kill a rapist in self defense as long as her attacker remains a clear and immediate threat.

The point of the "straw man" was to show there being a thing such as disproportionate use of violence in self-defense and where the line is drawn.

As for the device topic, I've already given my two cents on it.

here might be why:

or this one:

What. How the fuck is that telling someone that you should keep attacking? Where in those sentences do I even urge and incite anyone to keep attacking? All I'm doing is presenting a fully possible scenario where someone has crossed the line of what is acceptable in order to demonstrate where that line is drawn. That's not telling someone to keep attacking. That telling them to do the complete opposite! It's rhetorical!

If you're being raped and you have the option to stab someone in the leg or heart or abdomen in self-defense, you don't stab him in the heart or abdomen. Period. Those are vital areas that may kill him. You stab him in the leg to debilitate him long enough to make a hasty retreat and call for help. This is proportionate use.

Or to take it to the extreme: You manage to knock him unconscious and stab him multiple times. This is disproportionate use. We don't live in Tamriel where you can do whatever the fuck you want to someone as long as he delivers the first blow.

I want to be clear on your position here...

If the only option for self-defense is lethal force, do you think that it is immoral for a person to kill their assailant if it will prevent their rape?
If it was more likely that lethal force would result in their safety, do you think it is immoral for that person to opt for lethal force over non-lethal force which may not be adequate?

Let's do it a bit generally first. "You use only enough force so you can make a retreat and call for help. What's important is that the force you use does not exceed the aggressor's, for if you do then you're no better than him."
We'll assume this.
In order for lethal to be an option, the aggressor needs to use enough force. This can be e.g. pointing a gun at you (loaded or unloaded since the victim probably wouldn't know). At that point, you can (morally) use the lethal option. However, if he isn't pointing a gun or any other weapon at you, then you may not (morally) use the lethal option. This determines the "upper limit". The lower limit may be whatever you feel like.

So if you allow the dichotomy of "lethal" case and "non-lethal" case:
Second one: If "lethal", then yes, you may choose a lethal option. If "non-lethal", you may not.
First one: There are only two cases I can currently think of (at night) that could potentially necessitate lethal force to prevent rape. Either they're pointing a weapon at you or you're being physically restrained to the point of immobility (or both, but then the former takes precedence).
If the former, then you may choose lethal. The latter's a "special" case. Since you're being restrained to the point of immobility, only a third party could remove the aggressor. He, however is not restrained, thus he has also non-lethal options. And since it's not a "lethal" case, then the lethal option is out of the question.

[Realmfighter]

You can justify not crying about the thousands that die by realizing the difference between loving and caring about someone, and having a moral obligation to them. You don't have a moral obligation to cry at a funeral; any funeral. However, when our moral value systems actually come into play, then you can start considering others you don't nominally "care" about.

So in essence, your concern is feeling obligation to feel grief for others. I'd argue you don't have that obligation. Merely the obligation to consider their lives and happiness valuable when they becomes threatened.

The problem is that when you changed the scenario from 1 life or ten into one person you love against 10 people you don't know the dilemma changed from a logic puzzle into something personal. All things equal 1 person has less value then ten, but when you change it from a math problem into this logic stops applying. When it becomes my life being effected or theirs I will chose mine every time. As evil as it sounds I would emotionally care less about ten people I don't know dying than one I do know and my emotions are the only basis of measurement I can apply to this new situation.

[Sirus]

There's a reason why hundreds of years of philosophizing has never satisfactorily answered those types of questions