this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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oh, i think pulling the lever makes you a murderer. but that's the point of the trolley problem: it's not that there is a right answer, its that your answer will help you understand your own morality.
Are you willing to let four more people die just to avoid being a murderer? Do you assign to that label more moral value than you assign to human lives?
I'm not willing to be a murderer. you seem to be overlooking the person you would be killing.
And you are overlooking the other 5 people, claiming that you are not complicit in their death even though you, as the one standing at the lever, are the only one able to save them. Your status as "non-murderer" is more important to you than their lives.
I didn't put any of them in that position, and I'll be damned if I murder anyone.
You didn't put any of them in that position. And you didn't put that other person in a position where scarifying them is the only way to save the five people. You are not responsible for the situation, and yet you ended up with the power to pick the outcome. Out of several bad outcomes, yes - but you still have the the opportunity to pick the lesser evil.
You wish you didn't get that opportunity. You wish you weren't in this position. The six people tied to the track also wish they weren't in this position. But this is not real life, where complaining about the unfairness and wishing the misfortune didn't happen to you can solve everything and make everyone happy. This is a moral dilemma, engineered to root out the smart solutions and leave you with the hard choice - four human lives weighted against your personal moral status.
And you decided that four lives is an acceptable price to pay so that you can keep basking in your innocence.
i have a policy against choosing evil.
And the result of that policy is greater evil getting chosen.
I'm not responsible for what others choose.
I'm sure this little fact will provide great comfort during the fascist regime.
this is a thought terminating cliche. it doesn't rebuttal what I said or develop your position.
that's literally not what it is. it helps you understand your own ethical instincts. i'm deontological, and no deontologist, having examined the full trolley problem, pulls the lever. consequentialists do, but i believe consequential ethics is bad. it leads to doing bad things and even internally cannot consistently tell you the right thing to do.
your characterization is bad faith. my degree is in philosophy. i know what my ethics are, and it's not "Bask in innocence at all costs". it's "do the right thing". the right thing cannot be determined by the outcome since we can't know the future, so it would be impossible to know what the right thing to do is. therefore, the ethics of the action must be in the action itself. murdering people is bad. pulling the lever is bad. qed.
You do know the future though. At least - to some extent. You know that one of two candidates is going to be elected, not matter what. Or, at least, almost no matter what. Maybe a huge asteroid will hit the Earth and the elections won't matter. But the probability for these is so low, that you can effectively "count on" the fact that one of these two candidates is going to get elected.
The only question is which one.
knowledge of the future is impossible since you can only know true things and the future hasn't happened yet, so it has no truth value.
Isn't the entire anti-voting argument based on the knowledge that the candidate you'll vote for will do bad things in the future?
no? it's knowing what they've said and done in the past
What they've said and done in the past serves as an indicator for what they'll do in the future if elected. If you ignore that aspect, then voting becomes a system for rewarding politicians rather than a system for deciding the future of a country.
but the ethics can't be in what they do in the future. the ethics of the action are in the vote itself, and the only information yo uhave is about the past.
So... ^(1)^ voting for bad people is bad, not because they'll do bad things if they'll be put in power, but because ^jump\ to\ (1)^?
the ethics are in the action itself. yes.
So it all boils down to "because I said so" and I can't argue with that because you really did say so...
I'm not over here trying to argue you out of consequentialism. there is absolutely no way you're going to argue a degreed philosopher out of deontology (today. you could learn, maybe)
have you considered that "the end justify the means" is bad, actually, and that deontological ethics are the only way to actually be sure you are doing the right thing?
This is an acceptable position. "Even if you think murder is good in a specific case - don't. Too many past murderers also tried to justify their acts. We humans are too good at self serving rationalization to be trusted with such things"
The problem with this, is that you can't drag that solution to the voting issue. It works for the trolley problem because it relies on the fact that murder is a big taboo. Voting isn't a big taboo - you don't have a long history of "voting is bad" consensus. That idea is new, and has to stand on its own merits.
and no one is saying voting is bad. but voting for bad people definitely is bad.
Not voting is giving half a vote to the worse candidate.
you can't give half a vote.
Let's say Alice has a lead of one vote over Bob.
Two non-voters are equivalent to one voter switching sides. Therefore - one non-vote is equivalent to half a vote for the opponent.
you still haven't shown how to give half a vote
I showed how not voting counts as half a vote.
but it doesn't. it isn't counted at all. this is mental gymnastics that leads to actual election misinformation. stop.
Puns are not valid arguments. If broke into a ballot box (for the same of the argument, let's ignore all the security measures) and took out all the votes for the candidate I didn't like, these votes will literally won't be counted. Does that mean my action doesn't count?
it's not a pun. there is no pun at all. you're lying about how votes are counted.
The pun is about the double meaning of the word "count":
So what am I lying about exactly? I've presented an hypothetical case, and made two claims about it:
Which of these claim is incorrect?
I thought we were talking about counting votes the whole time. I'm not interested in helping you with your mental gymnastics routine.
We are, sort of, but counting votes is not just a fun pastime activity - it's a mean for determining who will take the power (or, in depending on the political system, how the power will be distributed) so my argument is that there is a meaning to the result of that count.