Well technically Armok is right this time because while there is actually a difference between killing people and letting them die, there is none from the point of view he proposed at first : Whether someone will live or die depends on you. The choice you make, whether it is not killing him or giving him money or becoming a scientist, determines how much you value life. And, Vector, if you want to do anything you can to save lives, I doubt you can say that it is the case of the whole "Life is sacred !" crowd. Plus, if you really believe being happy and discovering mathematical things is the very best way to prevent third-world kids from dying, you're wrong ; but if you can admit your own hard-wired egocentrism to yourself, then his remark wasn't addressed to you anyway.
No. The first sentence stated explicitly that I value an arbitrary theorem more than an arbitrary human life, when I'm not thinking too hard about the moral and social implications of that. The rest of the argument was saying that there is a certain amount of indirect good that people do, which is not being taken into account by Armok's argument.
Mostly, my point is that there's a difference between killing someone intentionally and doing so by negligence. The way he phrased his argument looks a lot like this:
"There's a lot of lonely young men in the world. If you're a young woman who doesn't spend every minute of every day dating these young men, then you're condemning them to lifetimes of celibacy and loneliness!"
It seemed ridiculous, so I commented on it. There are other philanthropists in the sea, and I can't hold myself personally responsible for every life I might have saved.
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Topic: I think (american) society punishes sex offenders too harshly. (Read 21086 times)