EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 4361
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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
micronesia
United States24632 Posts
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Magic Powers
Austria3730 Posts
On August 27 2024 08:54 micronesia wrote: Magic Powers, BlackJack's argument is exactly the type of "let's look at how this holds up in an extreme case" thought experiment the Supreme Court uses all the time. Setting aside their recent ridiculous rulings, they are generally right to use this method. There are limits to what you can accomplish with this method, but usually when people criticize the fact that it's an extreme example, it's because they aren't willing to admit that their original claim needs to be revised. If there's no difference (in your view) whether you manually switch the trolley to the track with 1 captive or whether you manually switch the trolley the other way to the track with 5 captives (because both are equally murder), then there is nothing wrong with someone asking what happens if it turns into 1 person on the first track and 10 on the second. Or 1 and 100, or 1 and a billion. If you seriously wouldn't throw the switch to move the trolley from killing the billion people to killing the one random person, then that is your choice to make so long as you didn't set the situation up. Most people wouldn't make that choice, but you can. Own up to it though. When put in that thought experiment, don't suddenly attack the person who posed it. It's a fair way to assess your very strong claim you made early on. No, I completely disagree. BJ's example strictly misses the point I made. My view (that murder of 1 equates to murder of 1 million) is dependent on the total lack of a prejudice towards the people in question. The people must be viewed as blank slates, because any amount of prejudice (such as a racial one) would create historical, emotional, or other baggage. You can't expect a mother to offer up her own child even if it meant saving an entire ethnic demographic such as Jews or otherwise. It's an impossible ask. That doesn't disprove her ideology if she believes the exact same thing I do about murder. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States22991 Posts
While it can be an interesting philosophical question, it's application in US politics is typically misguided and used almost exclusively to rationalize doing deplorable things and to alleviate the associated shame/guilt by neglecting the active role voters and politicians play in setting up the trolly to kill people. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3730 Posts
- You're asked to make a choice between either strangling one stranger to death with your bare hands or telling an executioner to shoot a million strangers in the head. Lets assume you pick option one because in your mind you go "it's for the better, and this is the last time I will do this." - After you've done the deed, you're asked to make the same choice again with a fresh group of people. A completely different stranger to strangle, a completely different group of a million strangers to get shot in the head by an executioner. What will your choice be this time? - Regardless of what your choice was the second time around, if repeated again and again, would you still be making the choice you made previously? There you go, I set up a completely impossible example. I'd bet you wouldn't want to make a choice at all, because every choice is terrible and it makes you look and feel like an absolute monster. I'd bet some people would even beg for their own death given enough repetitions. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10339 Posts
On August 27 2024 09:15 Magic Powers wrote: No, I completely disagree. BJ's example strictly misses the point I made. My view (that murder of 1 equates to murder of 1 million) is dependent on the total lack of a prejudice towards the people in question. The people must be viewed as blank slates, because any amount of prejudice (such as a racial one) would create historical, emotional, or other baggage. You can't expect a mother to offer up her own child even if it meant saving an entire ethnic demographic such as Jews or otherwise. It's an impossible ask. That doesn't disprove her ideology if she believes the exact same thing I do about murder. 1. I revised the question multiple times and the last time I didn’t include any races or identifying characteristics. So your refusal to answer is nothing more than a dodge. 2. The race shouldn’t really matter. If you say it’s never okay to murder someone, even to save a million then it shouldn’t matter if those million are Jews or Arabs or Swedes or anything. Never means never. It doesn’t mean never unless you also desire to virtue signal how loving you are of minorities that you would save them from a trolly. This is kind of a recurrent theme for you, imo. You claim these grand zero exception proclamations and then dig your heels in when you are challenged. It’s similar to the COVID thread when you insisted that there were zero risks with taking a vaccine and then insisting that “very rare” and “zero” are in fact the same. In the end I suspect that your definition of “never” when it comes to flipping the switch is equally loose. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3730 Posts
On August 27 2024 10:00 BlackJack wrote: 1. I revised the question multiple times and the last time I didn’t include any races or identifying characteristics. So your refusal to answer is nothing more than a dodge. 2. The race shouldn’t really matter. If you say it’s never okay to murder someone, even to save a million then it shouldn’t matter if those million are Jews or Arabs or Swedes or anything. Never means never. It doesn’t mean never unless you also desire to virtue signal how loving you are of minorities that you would save them from a trolly. This is kind of a recurrent theme for you, imo. You claim these grand zero exception proclamations and then dig your heels in when you are challenged. It’s similar to the COVID thread when you insisted that there were zero risks with taking a vaccine and then insisting that “very rare” and “zero” are in fact the same. In the end I suspect that your definition of “never” when it comes to flipping the switch is equally loose. We both know that the 8 billion people in your prior example is about choosing to erase the whole of the human species. So no, you're still doing the same thing, nothing has changed. You and I, we both can bring it to an absurd extreme. That is not proof that either of us is right. That's just not how these philosophical problems work. If you create any kind of emotional or other baggage that doesn't exist in the initial problem, then you're not presenting the problem anymore, you're creating your own twisted version of it. Which you can do, but it doesn't prove a person wrong. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10339 Posts
On August 27 2024 10:05 Magic Powers wrote: We both know that the 8 billion people in your prior example is about choosing to erase the whole of the human species. So no, you're still doing the same thing, nothing has changed. You and I, we both can bring it to an absurd extreme. That is not proof that either of us is right. That's just not how these philosophical problems work. If you create any kind of emotional or other baggage that doesn't exist in the initial problem, then you're not presenting the problem anymore, you're creating your own twisted version of it. Which you can do, but it doesn't prove a person wrong. The difference between you and I is I am easily capable and willing to answer your extreme examples because I’m not here to virtue signal about being “anti-murder” or whatever. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3730 Posts
On August 27 2024 10:18 BlackJack wrote: The difference between you and I is I am easily capable and willing to answer your extreme examples because I’m not here to virtue signal about being “anti-murder” or whatever. I'm not here for that either. People have revealed their pro-murder views all by themselves, I didn't ask them. | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2522 Posts
On August 27 2024 09:15 Magic Powers wrote: No, I completely disagree. BJ's example strictly misses the point I made. My view (that murder of 1 equates to murder of 1 million) is dependent on the total lack of a prejudice towards the people in question. The people must be viewed as blank slates, because any amount of prejudice (such as a racial one) would create historical, emotional, or other baggage. You can't expect a mother to offer up her own child even if it meant saving an entire ethnic demographic such as Jews or otherwise. It's an impossible ask. That doesn't disprove her ideology if she believes the exact same thing I do about murder. If there's no emotional baggage and all the people are the same, then the murder of one million is exactly one million times worse than the murder of one. There's nothing arbitrary there. You're trying to remove all context and say that 1 = 1,000,000. That's an absurd position to hold. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3730 Posts
On August 27 2024 10:44 Fleetfeet wrote: If there's no emotional baggage and all the people are the same, then the murder of one million is exactly one million times worse than the murder of one. There's nothing arbitrary there. You're trying to remove all context and say that 1 = 1,000,000. That's an absurd position to hold. First of all I wanna thank you for sticking with the original proposition. I have a thought process behind my reasoning. My first idea is that murder is the ultimate crime and no other crime can be worse (one can argue torture is equally bad, but I personally wouldn't consider it worse than murder). My second idea is that every human life has infinite value (for this reason I believe the death sentence is always wrong, and killing a person can only be justified as a form of self defense). Since infinite value cannot be surpassed by other infinite value (infinity times X equals infinity), one person has the same value as two people, two have the same value as three, and so forth. This poses the question of utility (which is not the same as value). The utility of death follows a different logic. Two people are expected to have greater utility than one person, three greater than two, etc. This is because two people are generally expected to be more effective at accomplishing a task than one person alone, three more than two, etc. My response to that is that the value of utility is different from the value of life. While two people do in fact have greater utility than one person, that doesn't mean we can combine their perspectives and come to the same conclusion. Each of these two people can only experience life once, or in other words they cannot experience life twice as many times as one person can. Effectively every person on the planet experiences life only once and exactly once. That means that all experiences start and end in the exact same way. Birth, life, death. In this way, due to the divided experience of life by all individuals, there is no individual that has a heightened (i.e. doubled) experience of life. These are the reasons why multiplying people doesn't equate to multiplying value (it only equates to multiplying utility), and it's why I consider the murder of one equal to the murder of a million. Utility cannot overcome the barrier that is the divided individual experience of life. | ||
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ZerOCoolSC2
8960 Posts
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Magic Powers
Austria3730 Posts
On August 27 2024 11:33 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: There just any math or reasoning to equate 1 to 1 million no matter how you try to spin it. That's 1 million lives gone compared to 1 life gone. The pain of losing 1 life may feel the same as losing 1 million, but numerically it isn't. If you're trying to base all of this on how you feel about 1 vs 1 million, that's a different debate altogether, no? Ok, that's the utility argument. But how do you explain that every person can only experience life and death exactly once? A million people each don't experience life and death a million times. They experience it once, just each of them individually. So the collective reward of being alive and the collective punishment of death equates to only one instance for each person. So from a non-utilitarian perspective I believe it makes complete sense to argue that there is no effective difference between one murder and two murders. If a person is willing to murder anyone at all, they could just as well be willing to murder all people. That, I think, is the reason why we treat murderers so harshly. | ||
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ZerOCoolSC2
8960 Posts
You're forced to make a pragmatic decision on saving 1 life versus 1 million. Einstein vs Marie Curie, Newton, Hawking, Tesla and Galileo. You have to choose which track. Knowing what you know, which do you choose? You can't not choose because the trolley is on a loop and will hit the other track if not stopped. Which track do you choose? E: Added clarification and fixed spelling. To add: You're still saying that 1 life = 1 million and your argument doesn't hold for the simple fact that those 1 million lives are 1 millions experiences. Not 1 singular shared by 1 million. 1 experience per person. So 1 experience doesn't equate to 1 million experiences. You're still devaluing the lives of 1 million people. Killing 1 and saying "oh well, might as well kill a million since they're all the same effectively in my mind" is sociopathic. | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2522 Posts
On August 27 2024 11:15 Magic Powers wrote: First of all I wanna thank you for sticking with the original proposition. I have a thought process behind my reasoning. My first idea is that murder is the ultimate crime and no other crime can be worse (one can argue torture is equally bad, but I personally wouldn't consider it worse than murder). My second idea is that every human life has infinite value (for this reason I believe the death sentence is always wrong, and killing a person can only be justified as a form of self defense). Since infinite value cannot be surpassed by other infinite value (infinity times X equals infinity), one person has the same value as two people, two have the same value as three, and so forth. This poses the question of utility (which is not the same as value). The utility of death follows a different logic. Two people are expected to have greater utility than one person, three greater than two, etc. This is because two people are generally expected to be more effective at accomplishing a task than one person alone, three more than two, etc. My response to that is that the value of utility is different from the value of life. While two people do in fact have greater utility than one person, that doesn't mean we can combine their perspectives and come to the same conclusion. Each of these two people can only experience life once, or in other words they cannot experience life twice as many times as one person can. Effectively every person on the planet experiences life only once and exactly once. That means that all experiences start and end in the exact same way. Birth, life, death. In this way, due to the divided experience of life by all individuals, there is no individual that has a heightened (i.e. doubled) experience of life. These are the reasons why multiplying people doesn't equate to multiplying value (it only equates to multiplying utility), and it's why I consider the murder of one equal to the murder of a million. Utility cannot overcome the barrier that is the divided individual experience of life. Are there ways in your life that you live the ideal "Human life has infinite value" or is it just something you tell yourself you believe? Personally, I'd have a hard time holding that position. The way I currently live would (correctly) lead people to believe that I evaluate my life as more valuable to me than most around me. If I truly believed each person I walked past had equal value to myself, I would consider investing in them as equally valuable to investing in myself. I do not, and cannot think of a single person actually that level of altruistic. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10339 Posts
Or more likely he will create some illogical abstract reason why the logic doesn’t work in reverse so as to not let Israel off the hook for 39,999 dead Palestinians. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10339 Posts
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Acrofales
Spain17918 Posts
On August 27 2024 11:15 Magic Powers wrote: First of all I wanna thank you for sticking with the original proposition. I have a thought process behind my reasoning. My first idea is that murder is the ultimate crime and no other crime can be worse (one can argue torture is equally bad, but I personally wouldn't consider it worse than murder). My second idea is that every human life has infinite value (for this reason I believe the death sentence is always wrong, and killing a person can only be justified as a form of self defense). Since infinite value cannot be surpassed by other infinite value (infinity times X equals infinity), one person has the same value as two people, two have the same value as three, and so forth. This poses the question of utility (which is not the same as value). The utility of death follows a different logic. Two people are expected to have greater utility than one person, three greater than two, etc. This is because two people are generally expected to be more effective at accomplishing a task than one person alone, three more than two, etc. My response to that is that the value of utility is different from the value of life. While two people do in fact have greater utility than one person, that doesn't mean we can combine their perspectives and come to the same conclusion. Each of these two people can only experience life once, or in other words they cannot experience life twice as many times as one person can. Effectively every person on the planet experiences life only once and exactly once. That means that all experiences start and end in the exact same way. Birth, life, death. In this way, due to the divided experience of life by all individuals, there is no individual that has a heightened (i.e. doubled) experience of life. These are the reasons why multiplying people doesn't equate to multiplying value (it only equates to multiplying utility), and it's why I consider the murder of one equal to the murder of a million. Utility cannot overcome the barrier that is the divided individual experience of life. Even if we accept this reasoning, you yourself already admitted there *is* something worse than murder: the extinction of the entire human race. You didn't want to answer Blackjack when he went to that extreme, precisely because it means the murder of 1 person vs the death of humanity as a whole. So if that is the case, your math is wrong, and human life cannot be infinitely valuable, because the value of humanity as a whole cannot be greater than infinity. Ergo, by your own reasoning human life must have a finite value. And all your reasoning comes crashing down. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28599 Posts
On August 27 2024 14:31 BlackJack wrote: Applying MP’s logic, if you are a nation at war then as soon as you kill your first innocent civilian you might as well carry on killing many more intentionally. You’ve already committed the mortal sin of murder and since it’s no worse to kill one million people than one person you might as well just carry on slaughtering people. It will help the war effort. It’s a good thing nobody else follows this logic because we wouldn’t want to incentivize mass murder. I mean there's the 'probably not actually stated by Stalin but still attributed to him'- quote: "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24417 Posts
On August 27 2024 15:07 Liquid`Drone wrote: I mean there's the 'probably not actually stated by Stalin but still attributed to him'- quote: "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." It’s a fine line, I’m stealing the credit for it if it wasn’t Stalin’s I don’t know if it’s the intent, but it does somewhat ring true. I think there’s some limitation in our brains, some things are simply too big to actually comprehend properly at some emotive or empathetic level. In a vaguely similar way I think billionaires don’t necessarily intend to sit Smaug style on their mountains of gold, their inability to utilise their haul for whatever purpose is in part that it’s a fundamentally unfathomable scale of wealth. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4714 Posts
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