Print

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

[Realmfighter]

What would you rather be doing? Further understanding yourself, of shooting little blue aliens?

[Jackrabbit]

Drinking coffee, if I had to choose.

But continue. I want to see what you smart people make of this.

[Cthulhu]

Killing someone is always wrong.  At some point you have to think "Is killing this guy more wrong than letting him live?" or "Would killing this person have greater benefits/less drawbacks than letting him live?"

You have to think of these things in terms of utility.

[Aqizzar]

And then watch your lawmaking descend into political cannibalism when ever person in the room comes up with different rubrics of utility.

Or enforce a rubric by autocratic fiat.  Which ultimately is the definition of law and order.

[Ampersand]

And that's why we put Ethics and Politics into separate boxes a long time ago.

[Cthulhu]

I never said anything about lawmaking, I'm talking about guy in your house has a gun and so do you.

You can deal with the law later, and that should factor into your decision about utility.

If you want you can draw up a chart on a dry-erase board, maybe discuss it with the burglar.

Then while he's considering the economy of burglary, you shoot him in the head.

[Aqizzar]

Ah, you mean at the moment, not after the fact.

If you want you can draw up a chart on a dry-erase board, maybe discuss it with the burglar.

Then while he's considering the economy of burglary, you shoot him in the head.

I wholly endorse the obfuscation plan.  Should work great on someone dumb enough to burglarize an occupied house.

[Earthquake Damage]

You cannot value life and still call murder justifiable (I'm going to assume you value life here.), who are you, or Anyone for that matter, to say what is punishable by death or not?

But thats were thing start getting iffy. Who are you to say that those thousand people deserve life more than the one? Are we going to leave things that should be debated over and over to simple arithmetic?

Give that your every decision has an opportunity cost, including those potential decisions which could save/sustain yet another life, you place a value on life all the time.  Even if you make a decision to sustain some life (how many and who/what doesn't matter), you're necessarily valuing that life over some other life.  As you say, how do you value something priceless, even against countless others?  To say that an any set of lives is worth more than another set is pretty much by definition putting a price on life (in terms of the lives involved if not something tangible or discrete like money).  You may satisfy your conscience with some shit about "I did my best", but you've still at the very least valued some life over others.  In all likelihood, most your decisions in fact value something besides life over at least some life.

Then in comes Aqizzar to remind us that values, morals, and other human constructs are, of course, arbitrary.

I'd also like to add, given that Realmfighter has twice brought up the notion of someone's "right" to do something (including calling yourself human, which is really a question of definition more than "right", but I digress...) and Creaca below talks about what's "fair", please to be realizing that rights, fairness, justice, and so forth are also arbitrary human constructs.

Also, WOO!  Deconstruction of human society and value systems!

[Creaca]

You cannot value life and still call murder justifiable (I'm going to assume you value life here.), who are you, or Anyone for that matter, to say what is punishable by death or not? Who are you to say what is right and what is wrong?

Most of Germany would have been bummed out about Hitlers death, I'm sure. But it seeming unjustified to them doesn't changed the fact that billions more would have applauded it. Hell, millions would have had no clue who Hitler was, and be largely apathetic had he died or not. It being unjustified to some, or hell, even the vast majority doesn't change the fact that nearly every murder is justified by some person or persons.

I think life does have value, but also that the value is based solely on your own perception of it.

Say a man does break into your home, sees you there. He is now forced to ask himself if your life is worth the chance of going to prison. Or if you're armed, he may even ask himself if your life measures up to his own. This is true on the flip side as well, you're also frightened, and asking yourself how much does this mans life measure up to your own?

If you did kill the robber, then calling it self defense would be a lie. You would have made a conscious decision to end his life, because you thought you where worth more than him. And why wouldn't you? You know every detail about yourself, your dreams, your ambitions. All you would likely know about him, is he's some scary guy invading your home and threatening your life.

We always judge lives as being worth more or less than our own, even at a subconscious level. That doesn't mean we have to like it, and that doesn't mean it's fair. But it does happen.

I'm not saying to go out and kill some guy you don't like because you think your better than him. We're capable of making choices and constructing and following our own moral guidelines for a reason. But rather when it comes to the question of "Do you sacrifice the life of One to save a Million" it's not a matter of arithmetic but rather who is being asked the question. Do you ask  the One person to be sacrificed? Their father? Maybe one of the Million? How about a child out of the Million? Maybe ask someone aware of this proposed sacrifice, but not directly related? How about asking someone not even aware that it's going on?

People are killed every day, and you can't stop that. It's a scary thought, but anyone has the ability to become a killer given the right or wrong circumstances.

Sorry, I got to rambling there, I could go on, but I'm not even sure where I started off now.

Edit: Everything I covered here got covered better by the above posters, just read their stuff again.

[Enzo]

Guys, we totally need urinals in the street, or pay a small tax that will go to business establishments that have urinals to convince them to let non-customers use their bathrooms. Seriously, sometimes I'll be swaggering about in the city, and I will be struck with a sudden urge to pee. I don't want to have to find some urinal or wait till I get home, I want to be able to just walk into a fast-food place and use their bathroom.

Nice try, Cheddarius, nice try. But the people 'round here seem more concerned with waxing philosophic on the morality of murder and inherent value of life than discussing something practical and important like the installation of public urinals in urban centers.

Which is to say...As part of the "Murder is wrong - usually" crowd, I'm resisting the urge to speak up and come off sounding like a subhuman bloodthirsty monster...

[Aqizzar]

Which is to say...As part of the "Murder is wrong - usually" crowd, I'm resisting the urge to speak up and come off sounding like a subhuman bloodthirsty monster...

Come on in, the water's fine.  Besides, we killed the public urinal idea already when the hivemind declared it uncomfortable to pee without walls around.  Urinals have a rim for a reason.

[Creaca]

What about placing Glory Holes into the side of buildings, with the exception that instead of being sexualy fulfilled, you pee into them?

Perhaps have a sign  over that hole saying "This hole, in fact, does not have glass or nails in it. Feel free to stick your unprotected penis inside!"

Come on in, the water's fine.

I second this statement kinseti.

[Aqizzar]

If I saw a hole with such a sign on it, I wouldn't even walk nearby for fear of it shooting bullets or something.

Also, everyone stop posting for an hour, the State of Union is about to start, and I don't want to miss anything there or here.

[Earthquake Damage]

Perhaps have a sign  over that hole saying "This hole, in fact, does not have glass or nails in it. Feel free to stick your unprotected penis inside!"

Yeah...  I'm pretty sure that wouldn't fly.

[Jackrabbit]

Okay, he's gone, make ridiculous declarations, support your point with flimsy evidence at best and accuse everyone disagreeing with you of being a homosexual and a racist!