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[Zorgn]

It is objectively wrong to eat anything that has ever been alive.

Why?

[Konis]

I thought canabilism is mostly an issue of ritual, or the results of starvation and fresh meet(corpses).  Not withstanding people with uber bizarre psychosis.

I'm sure there are lots of kinds of cannibal, but I know that for some, this is true.  In Montaigne's Essays he has one "On Cannibals" that addresses this specifically.  Apparently there were tribes in South America that ate their enemies to absorb their strength, etc, things like that, and because it was the ultimate insult, because they were turning them into animals / food.  But then when the Portuguese came, they stopped doing that because they liked the Portuguese explorers' way of de-humanizing much better: burying someone up to the waist, shooting them full of arrows, then hanging them.  Because they'd seen what the explorers did, they figured it must be much more painful than the way they were using, so they switched.

Hey, whaddya know:  http://courses.csusm.edu/hist318ae/Montaigne%20essay.htm

That's the full text, and the thing I was talking about is in the "B" section.

Interesting slice of life in the 1500's . . .

[Qmarx]

"Good" and "Bad" as ethical qualities do not have an absolute existance, but are dependant on ethical standards which can and will differ from individual to individual and even more greatly between different cultures.

I disagree.  Good and evil are "atomic".

[Wolfius]

Well, I was saying why cannibalism is an objectively bad idea, outside a starvation scenario where the dangers of not eating the dead outweighs the risks of illness.

In terms of resource waste, they could be used as fertiliser, but you have to be very careful about it to keep the risk of disease down - there's a good reason we've long burned or buried out dead, afterall.

And tossing them into the wild also has the risk of training local predators to eat people.

It is objectively wrong to eat anything that has ever been alive.

What makes it's objectively wrong? Unless you have an actual real-world cost, and given the claim, a rather big one at that, you're just making an arbitrary assertion.

I can construct another argument that I'm sure everybody will disagree with but be unable to refute: the life of an adult is more valuable and should be preferentially saved over the life of a very young child. Here's why: from a societal standpoint, the adult is worth more, and from a personal standpoint the adult will be aware of losing more. The adult is contributing usefully to society now and has already been trained/raised from childhood. Raising the child to adulthood requires a lot of resources that could be saved if you select the adult over the child. Similarly, the child has no idea what its future will be like; the adult has a future and knows exactly what it will lose if it dies.

All depends on the circumstances - in a crunch, the adult's skills and abilities are probably more conducive to the group's survival, while the child is generally a burden and takes more resources to train/retrain.

That adult will grow old/get sick/die sooner, however, so the child is needed to continue the population, and care for the current generation when they get old.

So, yeah, from an objective point of view the child is worth less, on the basis that they're more replaceable. Long term, however, you need children, and as they're naive and vulnerable, an imperative to protect them makes sense - otherwise too few children would make it to adulthood.

[Zorgn]

"Good" and "Bad" as ethical qualities do not have an absolute existance, but are dependant on ethical standards which can and will differ from individual to individual and even more greatly between different cultures.

I disagree.  Good and evil are "atomic".

I disagree with your disagreeing and would like to know why you think as you do as well as what you mean by that statement.

Continue.

[Astus Ater]

ALSO, if slaughtering one cow is immoral, deleting a region file is an atrocity, and that's a clearly untenable position. You will have to sort out Darfur before I start caring about those little cs.

Belieive it or not, I have nightmares about doing this and an entire universe blowing up.

[Qmarx]

"Good" and "Bad" as ethical qualities do not have an absolute existance, but are dependant on ethical standards which can and will differ from individual to individual and even more greatly between different cultures.

I disagree.  Good and evil are "atomic".

I disagree with your disagreeing and would like to know why you think as you do as well as what you mean by that statement.

Continue.

They are ideas that cannot be broken down any further.  Like the perception of the color "blue".

[Granite26]

"Good" and "Bad" as ethical qualities do not have an absolute existance, but are dependant on ethical standards which can and will differ from individual to individual and even more greatly between different cultures.

I disagree.  Good and evil are "atomic".

I disagree with your disagreeing and would like to know why you think as you do as well as what you mean by that statement.

Continue.

They are ideas that cannot be broken down any further.  Like the perception of the color "blue".

Mostly to be argumentative, 'Blue' is a set of wavelengths of light, and the definition of where blue ends and green begins is certainly up for debate.

On a more interesting note, the modern video game argument is almost entirely based on whether performing simulated acts of cruelty is a bad thing in and of itself or not.

I would lean towards the belief that wholesale butchering kittens in the fortress with little care for their simulated wellfare is a callous act, and to be avoided with relatively equivilant vigor.  It's just a simulation, but on the other hand, it's a simulation of you in a position of power.  Your decisions DO have moral weight.  My two cents, anyway

[DwarfMan69]

It is objectively wrong to eat anything that has ever been alive.  This includes animals, plants, fungi, and both eukaryotic and prokaryotic bacteria.  Milk is acceptable, and honey would be - but only if it comes from a being that has expressed that the harvest is acceptable.  Thus we are limited to eating milk and cheese from human donors.

You suck at being sarcastic.

[cbfog]

Mostly to be argumentative, 'Blue' is a set of wavelengths of light, and the definition of where blue ends and green begins is certainly up for debate.

On a more interesting note, the modern video game argument is almost entirely based on whether performing simulated acts of cruelty is a bad thing in and of itself or not.

I would lean towards the belief that wholesale butchering kittens in the fortress with little care for their simulated wellfare is a callous act, and to be avoided with relatively equivilant vigor.  It's just a simulation, but on the other hand, it's a simulation of you in a position of power.  Your decisions DO have moral weight.  My two cents, anyway

So you're saying that I am IRL an evil monster because I put all my animals in a lead cage and threw them into the bottom of a pond to see if they would die en masse in DF? 

[Muz]

If you don't feel the least bit guilty about tossing some animals into the bottom of a pond, it's simply moral blindness. If you do feel guilty, but justify it "just because they're not real", it's fine.. but when you become a soldier, you shouldn't shoot citizens and justify it the same way most war criminals do. The reason Nazis managed to execute thousands without guilt was because they saw them as inferior humans.

Ethical decisions is really only about making the 'best' choice. Killing a person is bad. Killing a person just because he did a crime is also bad. Killing a person in order to prevent him and other people from doing the crime is an ethical dilemma.

So, here.. eating fish to stay alive.. well, yeah, I guess comparing it to modern society, it's nothing. I'm just going to copy what Mohreb said about wolves not being unethical


(Hmm.. I just had the amusing thought that people might start challenging themselves by playing DF "ethically" from now on.)

[G-Flex]

Did you just manage to compare pitting animals in DF to nazism?

Personally, no, I don't see the need to feel guilty about killing things which don't exist. DF animals are not alive. They're extremely simplistic representations.

[Makrond]

Godwin.

'Twas a bad analogy, but we'll let it slide. Try not to do it again.

Just to make this post relevant:

Ethics kinda go out the window when you play a video game. It's part of the fun, really. It's sort of a given that, were you confronted with a similar situation in real life, you would act differently.

Putting it in perspective (and to quote G-Flex himself): killing kittens in Dwarf Fortress isn't really unethical as long as you realize that you shouldn't actually DO that in real life.

[G-Flex]

The basic point is still there, though.

I mean, why should I feel guilty for killing something in a video game, which obviously isn't living or even all that complex? As long as I have any sort of decent understanding of fantasy vs. reality, and know that actually DOING that sort of thing in real life would be awful, why is it a problem?

[d3c0y2]

If you don't feel the least bit guilty about tossing some animals into the bottom of a pond, it's simply moral blindness. If you do feel guilty, but justify it "just because they're not real", it's fine.. but when you become a soldier, you shouldn't shoot citizens and justify it the same way most war criminals do. The reason Nazis managed to execute thousands without guilt was because they saw them as inferior humans.

Ethical decisions is really only about making the 'best' choice. Killing a person is bad. Killing a person just because he did a crime is also bad. Killing a person in order to prevent him and other people from doing the crime is an ethical dilemma.

So, here.. eating fish to stay alive.. well, yeah, I guess comparing it to modern society, it's nothing. I'm just going to copy what Mohreb said about wolves not being unethical


(Hmm.. I just had the amusing thought that people might start challenging themselves by playing DF "ethically" from now on.)

my god, How could I be so blind. All these years I thought people were all equal, but your analogy has made me see sense!

I am better than those few lines of code that make animals in DF, therefore the Nazi's were right, Slavs and jews were inferior!




Now lets take a step back to reality: comparing a game in which  animals are represented by a small letter, or a simple tile, and have basic pathfinding skills, to the holocaust is right up their with george Bush levels of stupidity. Really, Not only does this game become unplayable if animals are allowed to roam free because of lag, but number two, ITS A BLOODY GAME, "its a game, so its ok" is not the same as "Mein Fuhrer said the jews are worthless pigs, so its ok" They are completely different and thats were your arguement falls arse over head.


Infact, the connection is none existent, the Nazi's never said "the jews are not real, your bullets will fly straight through them" they said "the jews are an inferior species"

Im not going "the cow(in a computer game) is an inferior species, IT MUST BURN" infact in real life man is not saying that, he's just doing it to procure food, which is natural! Animals eat animals, it happens in real life and it happens in game. Would you go up to a free range farmer in real life and say "you're no better than the Nazis"

your post is offencive, demeaning and doesnt even make sense, it is probably one of the worst things I've read in a long time.