[respecting a request, and removing ALA and AOD]
Nick Keighley said:
On 17 Aug, 19:30, "BGB / cr88192" <
[email protected]> wrote:
<snip>
[justified killings - in war]
<--
you say that like it's a bad thing...
-->
if one has belief, and assumes that the creator and the people operate
under
a comparable moral code (assume that, for sake of his own authority, he
follows a comparable code), than any actions that the creator has taken
are
assumed to be morally valid,
I regard such people as dangerously deluded
and ones' model should be able to account for them.
well I know such people exist. I hope pragmatic considerations over
ride their ideology much of the time.
well, the idea is not that one has to act in this way, but that a model
should allow for any presumably ethical behaviors, although one may choose
not to do them (since one is neither under obligation, nor may it be
beneficial, for someone to do so).
uh? why? I'm a great believer in the Golden Rule. Treat others as
you'd like to be treated yourself. The only evil is doing unnessary
harm to others. We operate iterated prisoner's dilema. Obeying the law
is usually a good idea.
see above
yes, but the problem is, the golden rule still can't address some of these
cases, which otherwise would have to be categorized as immoral (but, then
the prior criteria still apply).
this creates internal self-contradictions and axiomatic problems...
a person which can do no wrong does something which is wrong.
either, the person can do wrong, or what they have done is not (actually)
wrong.
hence my "usually obey the law"
There is the concept of the unjust law.
fair enough...
the priciple is to try not to harm other people. To try to get along
with people, within reason.
No set of ethical guidelines is perfect, you're going to be wrong some
of the time. Live with it. It's an imperfect and human world and you
(and I) are imperfect humans.
yeah.
but, I mean, many of the other sorts of "principles".
for example: "porn is immoral as it violates the purity of marriage".
this poses a big problem, as it is somewhat undefined as to what this
"purity" is in this context, how it is that porn would "violate" it, and
more so, what relevance this would have to a person who is not married (they
don't have a marriage, hence whatever this "purity" is, it can't be
"violated" if it doesn't exist in the first place...).
(I remember I have heard claims that make far less sense than this, but I
can't remember them so well given how little sense they made...).
cost and dependency chains are, in effect, much easier to imagine.
explicit rules are also easier to imagine (if it is directly stated, or can
be easily inferred from the prior rules, this also makes sense).
like, since neither the NT nor the OT ever mention porn, and since one is
not actually "doing" much of anything else immoral (unless one goes by
Catholic definitions), then the simpler answer is "doesn't matter, good
enough".
if an argument doesn't make any sense or involves using statements out of
context, or is otherwise in conflict with what it is quoting from, it
doesn't have much weight IMO.
yes, seems reasonable enough.
a lot of this does seem to match well enough with observed patterns and
behaviors and a lot of the information I am considering.
I'm suspicious of the "value and weighting" bit. In general any form
of quantitative ethics strikes me as broken by design. And often a way
to justify a decision actually made by other means.
possibly.
I had generally used it more as a model for prediction than for
justification...
like, predict why these people do this rather than that?...
predict why these things are said to be good, and these other things are
said to be bad?...
patterns seem to emerge, and "values and weighting" or "economics" seem to
be fairly good predictors.
anything which tends to net benefit the people involved tends to be moral,
and anything which is net destructive then is immoral...
economies tend to follow a similar pattern, which would seem to imply that,
by extension the "morally better" option tends to also be the "cheaper"
option.
however, other people seem to believe in morals which run counter to this
pattern, such as veganism:
surely, people derive more benefit from not being vegans than from being
vegans, so why is it that they claim that this is the right thing to do?...
the cost of produce vs the cost of meat doesn't appear to be in their favor
at least.
the "organic foods" movement makes even less sense, since they are paying
extra money for this.
so, admittedly, there are factors which are not being accounted for in all
this...
but does everyone else have to tolerate his ego? This is why we have
prisons. We can also pick and choose who we socialise with or do
business with.
because there isn't one. The mistake was thinking there was.
fair enough...
although, presumably, an ethical model would address the problem of why
someone should always "do the right thing", even in cases where they could
get away with it without personal cost.
people tend to do this (among other things), but why this is the case is
uncertain...
at least on this front, there is a notable mismatch between the model and
between observed behaviors, and it is not clear what is missing or how to
address this mismatch.
I suspect it would be beyond reasonable abilities to implement at this point
anyways, and is not likely to reveal much I don't know already.
<--
unless it's a Brazillian electrian or you're the SAS
-->
well, general as a general rule...
The Brazillian electrician was a suspected suicide bomber who was shot
several times in the head by Metropolitan (London) Police officers. He
was not a suicide bomber, not a muslim, not even middle eastern. No
one was charged. [this was a week after a series of suicide bombings
on the London underground]
The SAS have been accused of "operating a shoot to kill policy" (what
else do police or army marksmen do? ITTM "shoot without warning
policy") in Gibralter and Northern Ireland.
fair enough...
hence the Brazillian electrician. They shot him in the head because a
body shot was too dangerous.
ok.
But the IRA didn't. I thought the 10p piece was their smartest weapon.
A bomb threat causes nearly the same economic disruption whether or
not there is actually a bomb.
ok.
IRA, ETA, Red Army Faction, OAS
possibly...
not heard much of them around here (although I have heard of the IRA, but
they aren't really in the US).
