Causality thing.

[otters~1]

Sidetrack: is amorality worse than immorality, or vice-versa?

"Worse"?
moral: having a behavioral code which encourages good actions
immoral: having a behavioral code which encourages bad or "evil" actions
amoral: not having a behavioral code

Uh ... yeah. Is having a behavioral code and breaking it worse than never having one at all, or vice-versa?

[SlappyMcGee]

There is a character on The Wire *SPOILERS* named Omar Little. Omar never kills anybody who isn't part of "The Game", that is to say, the drug running life. He has no qualms killing anybody who does deal drugs, or helps. He is also abhorred when somebody kills his boyfriend and drapes the corpse over the hood of a car, mutilated. He thinks that they took it too far. The man has a code, and is certainly immoral in that sense, yet we sympathize with him. He has set boundaries, and he fits into a roll in society. He tries to deal with the roll he is given. On the other hand, a character like Avon Barksdale will kill anybody who gets in his way, no matter what side of the law he's on. This man doesn't have a code, and it's much more difficult to sympathize with his actions. We really only sympathize with the character because we know how he ended up there, so I believe being without a code is less dick-ish than being with a code that allows for evil and bad.

[origami_alligator]

furthermore,
scenario one is a judgment call;
scenario two is a psychology experiment;
scenario three would probably be considered torture.

scenario four, in which you're John Henry and you used your hammer to lay all the railroad tracks, is a study in obsessive compulsive behaviour.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

He is also abhorred when somebody kills his boyfriend and drapes the corpse over the hood of a car, mutilated. He thinks that they took it too far.

"Abhorred" is synonymous with "hated".
Did you mean "horrified"?

[SlappyMcGee]

He is also abhorred when somebody kills his boyfriend and drapes the corpse over the hood of a car, mutilated. He thinks that they took it too far.

"Abhorred" is synonymous with "hated".
Did you mean "horrified"?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/abhorred

"The problem with Establishment Republicans is they abhor the unseemliness of a political brawl"

Seems to be the same context to me, although I am open to being proven wrong.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

When you say "he was abhorred", you're saying "everyone abhorred him". I don't watch the show you were talking about, so I don't know whether you were actually saying that the unspecified masses vehemently detested him / regarded him with horror and loathing after he saw his boyfriend's mutilated body or whatever, but based on the phrasing, I assumed that you meant to say that he was in a state of shock and disgust upon seeing what he did.

[SlappyMcGee]

When you say "he was abhorred", you're saying "everyone abhorred him". I don't watch the show you were talking about, so I don't know whether you were actually saying that the unspecified masses vehemently detested him / regarded him with horror and loathing after he saw his boyfriend's mutilated body or whatever, but based on the phrasing, I assumed that you meant to say that he was in a state of shock and disgust upon seeing what he did.

You're correct in assuming the latter. Point, Tsukatu.

[Zilla]

Wait, what? If a dude is about to die, and you have the power to save him, you save him. Especially if there are no adverse side effects from doing so!

The fuck is wrong with you guys?

And I would certainly do so. Do not confuse the issue. I would save somebody given the opportunity, however, I am not responsible if I do not. Otherwise, you are responsible for the deaths of hundreds by not giving any leisure money you possess to charities.

I remember reading an essay (well, being forced to read an essay for AP Lang) that actually directly insinuated this. If you can afford to donate to a charity but choose not to in order to spend the money on your own leisure or anything beyond your survival needs, you are directly responsible for that person's miserable conditions or eventual death. The author used a variant of the trolley problem where the character in question, Bob, is about to retire and uses his savings to purchase a rare and valuable old Bugatti, which he loves to drive but cannot afford to insure; since the car is rising in market value, he figures he can always just sell it and make a profit if he needs to. One day Bob goes out for a drive and parks his Bugatti on the side of a railroad; while he's walking around, he sees a runaway train that'll soon hit a child further along the track. He's too far away to warn the child, but he can divert the train; however, doing so will cause it to crash into his beloved Bugatti. So he doesn't divert it, the child is killed, and Bob enjoys his Bugatti and financial security.

You can read the entire essay here if you really want to, but the gist of it is that if you use surplus income on needless things instead of living on the absolutely bare minimum needed to support a household (around $30,000, apparently), donating the rest to charity and doing your part to end world poverty, you're kind of a dick. I don't personally agree with 100% of what the author is saying; I think he's taking it to extremes, since it seems like he's implying that whether you choose to work towards becoming a doctor or slack off and spend the rest of your life as a sanitation engineer, you shouldn't see any change in your standard of living, and you'll only have more moral gratification. I can understand making an argument against excess, but the guy should probably allow for human nature just a bit more. The communist undertones are strong with this one.

However, he does make a valid point about doing at least something to help others. I think adding an element of personal sacrifice to the trolley problem makes it a bit more interesting. What do you guys think?

[SlappyMcGee]

My thinking here is simply that we, for the most part, earned the money in the way that the impoverished have not, sadly. I`m not saying they do not work as hard as me, merely that the service they provide to society is evidentally not as valuable.

And as far as the bugatti problem goes, it is very similar to the original question, only with more incentive to not save the person. A dick, perhaps, but not a criminal dick.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I`m not saying they do not work as hard as me, merely that the service they provide to society is evidentally not as valuable.

I don't know... I can think of a number of professions that are paid far more than they deserve. But I agree with you that it's possible for people to simply not be valuable enough to society.

I haven't read that initial essay, but I think it'd be an even bigger dick move, not to mention a horrendous criminal act, to derail the train and kill hundreds for the sake of one child.

[SkyPanda]

Good Samaritan laws, which I presumed was where this topic would end up, are fucking bullshit.

There's possibly a bit of confusion here. 'Good samaritan laws' are laws that protect people who attempt to aid others from liability in the event that their aid turns out to be detrimental. I don't think that they are bullshit, as the only main problem with them- that unqualified people can do serious damage without consequence- is usually negated by principles such as consent, imminent peril, etc.

If you were actually referring to 'duty to rescue' laws, then i'd be interested in why you think they're bullshit. Most of them are basically a requirement to call emergency services as soon as possible when somebody requires rescue, if doing so doesnt endanger yourself.

I believe if your lack of action directly kills somebody, that's no different than if your action had directly killed somebody. Not donating to charity isn't killing people in the same way that spending money on products produced in factories that produce harmful chemicals isn't killing people. It's too indirect. The law is perfectly capable of distinguishing between directly affecting and indirectly affecting.
I also believe that a lack of action that directly harms somebody should be recognised in law, as in the duty rescue laws. They're often quite basic and there are plenty of defences that can be raised, especially in jurisdictions where the law features an element such as "unless you have a good reason not to".


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law (includes a comparison with duty to rescue)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue

[SlappyMcGee]

Good Samaritan laws, which I presumed was where this topic would end up, are fucking bullshit.

There's possibly a bit of confusion here. 'Good samaritan laws' are laws that protect people who attempt to aid others from liability in the event that their aid turns out to be detrimental. I don't think that they are bullshit, as the only main problem with them- that unqualified people can do serious damage without consequence- is usually negated by principles such as consent, imminent peril, etc.

If you were actually referring to 'duty to rescue' laws, then i'd be interested in why you think they're bullshit. Most of them are basically a requirement to call emergency services as soon as possible when somebody requires rescue, if doing so doesnt endanger yourself.

I believe if your lack of action directly kills somebody, that's no different than if your action had directly killed somebody. Not donating to charity isn't killing people in the same way that spending money on products produced in factories that produce harmful chemicals isn't killing people. It's too indirect. The law is perfectly capable of distinguishing between directly affecting and indirectly affecting.
I also believe that a lack of action that directly harms somebody should be recognised in law, as in the duty rescue laws. They're often quite basic and there are plenty of defences that can be raised, especially in jurisdictions where the law features an element such as "unless you have a good reason not to".


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law (includes a comparison with duty to rescue)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue

Yeah, I meant the latter. I was mostly going based on the finale of Seinfeld.

Point being, you believing that it is your duty to help somebody on the side of the road by law but you find that keeping money for yourself instead of giving it to, say, a homeless person on the side of the road, I think that is much more contradictory. You can argue the semantics of directness, but mostly it comes down to the fact that anything you do will have causal implications on the life of another human being. The socialist outlook is to minimize the damage by giving as much as you possibly can to everybody. The more liberty oriented look at this is simply that it is not your responsibility nor your ability to keep everybody safe, so do what you can, and you wont be punished if you dont. (written with a french keyboard.)

[formica]

You can read the entire essay here if you really want to, but the gist of it is that if you use surplus income on needless things instead of living on the absolutely bare minimum needed to support a household (around $30,000, apparently), donating the rest to charity and doing your part to end world poverty, you're kind of a dick. I don't personally agree with 100% of what the author is saying; I think he's taking it to extremes, since it seems like he's implying that whether you choose to work towards becoming a doctor or slack off and spend the rest of your life as a sanitation engineer, you shouldn't see any change in your standard of living, and you'll only have more moral gratification. I can understand making an argument against excess, but the guy should probably allow for human nature just a bit more. The communist undertones are strong with this one.

However, he does make a valid point about doing at least something to help others. I think adding an element of personal sacrifice to the trolley problem makes it a bit more interesting. What do you guys think?[/quote]

Communist undertones?

Peter Singer is a 100% straightforward utilitarian with 100% straightforward, simplistic utilitarian views on everything. He's a pure philosopher, and he never really stops to think about the world. Your comment about human nature is the perfect sort of example of the thing he just doesn't seem to consider in his wonderfully pure philosophical world.

His charity thing is rubbish, because he's talking completely in abstract, and it doesn't relate to the real world at all. Charities are pretty damn flawed and selective with where their money goes. It's been commodified in a big way, and it's the flashy, showy projects (orphanages for adorable black children and tsunami victims!) that get the money, with a bunch of people still excluded (say, adult males.) There was some pretty messed up stuff after the tsunami hit Sri Lanka, with children being plucked out of supportive environments with living relatives to fill out these shiny, new buildings, and with a lot of necessary stuff not really being covered by charities, because it looked so much less impressive. In any case, there are a bunch of places that charities can't get into even if they wanted to. Say, when communist Vietnam was liberating Cambodia from the Khmer Rogue, nobody could do anything about the subsequent humanitarian crisis because the US was being a dick in the UN because Vietnam, communist Vietnam (gasp! shock! horror!) was the one doing the liberating.

Besides, there are structural roots to poverty, starvation, and low standards of living, and there's a MUCH stronger moral case to get rid of these root causes than there is to force everybody to sacrifice their standard of life to help out, in an abstract, non- defined way, people worse off than themselves. Besides, the people Peter Singer is putting the pressure on to donate are generally the exact same class of people that are being exploited, if slightly less so. The people actually CAUSING this rubbish are more or less let off the hook.


I'm going to tentatively say that I think your level of self- sacrifice (flicking a switch vs throwing yourself in the cogs), your ability to enact meaningful change (definitely save a man vs give money to others who might be able to do something better with it than you), others' ability to enact change (there are ten other people way closer to the switch, there are people causing poverty who could fix it by abandoning their screwy models of "development"), the directness of your involvement, (you chain him down vs somebody else does; you're both being oppressed by the same people, but to different levels) and your responsibility for the situation in the first place (tying a guy down or buying up sorghum to sell at inflated prices during a drought) are relevant factors. How much weight they carry, iunno.