Not sure why you've suddenly started linking railway death statistics. — Tzeentch

Right. Understood.

"Thou shalt not kill" seems like a perfectly realistic moral obligation, for example. — Tzeentch

Thou shalt not kill 1, or thou shalt not kill 5? In this context, that seems a particularly foolish comment. It happens rather frequently to train drivers that people are killed by the train they are driving.

Of the fatalities on the railway in 2019/20:

Six occurred on a level crossing
17 involved people trespassing on the railway
283 were suicides or suspected suicides

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/looking-after-the-railway/delays-explained/fatalities/

I think you're throwing the term around too loosely, and in the process either claiming the existence of moral obligations which are impossible to fulfill, or 'obligations' which are so vague and subjective that they lose all their meaning. — Tzeentch

And I think you are confusing moral obligations with legal ones. Of course moral obligations are impossible. And if you try very hard indeed, you get crucified for your pains.

A while back a concert was bombed by a terrorist in Manchester UK, and there was much criticism because the emergency services (police fire ambulance) did not immediately rush in, for fear of a second bomb or other terrorist act. Some people died as a result of the delay. Emergency services routinely put themselves in harm's way for others, but the senior persons in this case thought the danger for their crews too great to intervene immediately, and crews stood by for some time to see what developed.

As it happened the lone bomber was dead. Dilemmas happen, and sometimes even the experts get it wrong.

reducing this to statistics is not a solution as I could save the wrong person. I could save a Hamas leader or Bibi and I'd rather not. — Benkei

I think introducing another calculation as to the moral worth of the individuals is a completely false move. This is what doctors are expressly forbidden to do, but their oath is to do their best for PolPot and Mother Theresa without distinction. The War Crimes Tribunal is the place for such judgements, not the railway line or the hospital.

Well, you were challenging my comment and I worked with what you gave me. — Tzeentch

Yes. I challenge the idea that we have no obligation to strangers. We have a small obligation to do something if we reasonably can to make another's situation better if they are in difficulty. The trolley situation as played out in 's video would be traumatic precisely because one would feel that one ought to intervene and take responsibility, as the the only person able to. But behind it is the real question as to what the train operator's policy ought to be and what the the professional switchman should do or not do in that situation. The stranger would not be blamed for making a wrong decision or freezing in the unfamiliar emergency, but the switchman and the rail company need a policy, based on a moral principle. And of course, the workers on the line also need to know that policy to protect themselves from random track switchers.

So if you work for unenlightened railways, or if you like to trespass on unenlightened tracks, you should be aware that trains will never be switched unless the line is thought to be clear, and no-one who is not in danger should be put in serious danger by anyone else to save others. If you are on the tracks, you are putting yourself in danger, and workmen should always be alert to the possibility of trains, and not stand on the tracks to make phone-calls or have a chat about what an arse the boss is, especially with headphones on.

Apparently there exists a moral obligation to save people from dying, even if it requires the murder of bystanders, but this obligation is limited by distance and now seemingly also does not include acts that exceed the effort of a lever pull. — Tzeentch

No, I'm on the other side of the lever pulling in theory, but i think in the moment I would be tempted. Try to keep up.

There is no obligation to act whenever there is no action one can take. If breaking the the tv would stop the war, I'd feel obligated to break the tv, but it wouldn't. I can respond to something on the tv by various means, usually involving my bank account so as to pay someone else to do something. But if I did that too often I'd have to sell the tv and then I wouldn't even have that option. What can you do heroic countless times a day if only you felt you ought ?

There are no levers on a television.

All of us are after all bystanders in countless numbers of situations which are just begging for a hero. — Tzeentch

I'm not sure where you live, but where I live, people are not dying in front of me countless times, or even ever in my longish life.

I can't help it if I'm lucky. — Bob Dylan

Smile! Make America smile again.

This ignores what he's actually said. In the OG scenario, you have no idea about differential value. You couldn't employ such a principle.

IN the subsequent, it is available to you. Unless i've missed something fundamentally esoteric about hte cases, this seems obvious. — AmadeusD

Nor is there any differential value in the variant examples I offered unless you have something against fat men or people who need transplants. Let me say something callous sounding.

There are way more people in the world than it can sustain, and we are destroying the ecosystem on which we depend. Therefore it is better that five people die than one. Assume the facts are true; is the moral logic wrong? This is the logic of accelerationism. Human population is in overshoot and the sooner it is radically reduced, the better it will be both for the planet and for humanity. Only the most fortunate will have a quick death by trolley; most will die of heat-stroke or starvation.

Why? Morality is often thought of as, "What ought to be/happen." If you think the moral actions is that the lever should be pressed, then you think its moral to do so. Your guilt or emotions over the issue don't change whether something is moral or not. — Philosophim

I do not always do what I think I ought to do. I base what I thought I would do on my feelings on watching the video. But one of the things I believe one ought not do is calculate the moral value of lives in the way the problem and the situation invites, because every life has infinite value. But neither do i think it is right to make the opposite calculation of course, that one life is worth more than five. and neither do I believe there is any more virtue in inaction than in action. So I have nothing. I do not think there is a moral problem at all, there is no right thing to do, and whatever someone does in that situation,
I would neither laud or condemn, but sympathise with the stress of the crisis. In other words, I am not a consequentialist.

It's one of those things that gives philosophy a bad name. It's nothing like any person will ever have to face in the real world. I wasn't going to say anything and disrupt the discussion, but you gave me an opening. — T Clark

In the light of the video above, where folks were placed in a situation that they really believed that was almost exactly the trolley problem, it is clearly a possible scenario, and one has to suspect that you have other reasons to hate it.

I vote revolution. Off with their heads. — Benkei

Not on the ballot paper. Personally, I found it bad enough beheading a chicken. I do not believe either of us would even behead Putin or Trump.

Aye, there's the rub. My action killed one, but your inaction killed five.

So here is your principle: If I do nothing, I do nothing wrong. So now you are one of the five tied on the track; do you want to persuade me to act at all?

I think this problem is morally irrelevant. This is a game, where the game master has constrained your moral agency to a binary choice of bad outcomes. — Benkei

As is usually the case, in for instance an election, will you vote for the Dispicables or the Incompetents?

I'm not declaring a principle. I'm declaring, "In X scenario, this is the correct answer" — Philosophim

The one over the five people every time. — Philosophim

This is what I mean by a principle. but it turns out that you don't think it's every time, but only this specific time. And the only lesson I can learn, in that case, is to ask Philosophim whenever there's a moral dilemma, because he will know the correct answer, but will not know why it is correct. That is more of a cult than a philosophy.

So to be clear, there's a lever for you to pull or not to pull. Five nameless vs 1 nameless, the track is currently set to kill five nameless humans. What do you find moral in this specific and unaltered situation and why? — Philosophim

I don't know what i would do, quite possibly freeze like most of the people in the video. But if I didn't freeze, I would pull the lever. But I would feel guilty about it, because I do not believe it is moral to do so. I believe it is the comfortable thing to do.

Hey, I just saved 5 people from certain death, and you're complaining just because I had to sacrifice you? It wasn't my fault you were wandering around the trolly tracks not trying to save anyone.

Please explain how the arithmetic is not crucial — Philosophim

If there is a principle that it is right to act to kill 1 to save 5, the principle should apply to both scenarios. Since it doesn't apply to both scenarios, there must be another principle that overrides the numbers principle that makes the difference. This is the idea of doing thought experiments, that you test how you justify things.

Hence another variation, where you cannot switch the points, but you can push a fat man onto the track and save the 5 at the cost of his life. Again, switching the points and having someone die as "collateral damage" seems less repugnant than actively pushing some passer-by, like @Tzeentch, into harms way. But is it? I think the callous bastard deserves it. :wink:

My answer is to the specific scenario they gave. Of course the answer is different with a different scenario. — Philosophim

Then the arithmetic is not crucial, and your justification based on the arithmetic is not valid.

That is a different scenario. — Philosophim

The sameness in the scenario is that one acts to deliberately kill one person not in danger, in order to save 5 people who would otherwise die.

If your answer is different in different scenarios, you need to add moral principles to your analysis that makes the moral distinction clear, because it is not as obvious as the arithmetic.

If of course its simply a matter of numbers, the answer is obvious. — Philosophim

And yet doctors are not permitted to sacrifice one person to save five lives with organ transplants.

The mathematics only works some of the time.

A definition is nothing more or less than some words about a word that can roughly substitute for it. Take this as a definition of "definition".

Herewith, some words about "art", that will not quite do as a definition, but may be somewhat illuminating and/or somewhat obscuring.

One meaning of 'art' can be 'a skilful practice', and particularly one that involves judgement that cannot be entirely tied down to an algorithm, but that is very broad, and inexact. In the context of speaking of, say, "artistic merit" another criterion is important - creativity. This seems to involve novelty or originality, thus to call a piece "derivative" is to denigrate it. But mere novelty does not suffice, there must also surely be meaning and significance, which entails a communication of some sort, and since communication is shared, it it involves what has already been done, and is already known, and this is where some expertise is necessary for the judgement of artistic merit, to the extent that it becomes an art in itself.

It is part of the business of the artist to challenge and transcend the limits of the meaning of the word "art", and add something new to it, and this is why one can never capture it in a definition. This in turn gives some clue as to the limitations of formulaic tv shows that purport to be the arbiters of good taste and artistry.

I was debating with a malicious user about what a paradox is. I tried my best at debating, but the discussion was over because I was not comfortable typing in English, according to him. Here is when the malicious user gets trapped in his own ignorance. It is impossible to say to me that I am not comfortable debating in English if my texts are proofread by a grammar checker. But, I get it. I know I will keep reading similar comments if someone does not agree with me in the future. It is just some of you behave and post with malice. — javi2541997

Some people will take any opportunity to make themselves feel better by making others feel worse. And even the mods cannot protect us from that entirely. I lived in France for a few years and was always the stupid foreigner. My proudest moment was once to be mistaken for a Belgian - a stupid alcoholic French-speaking foreigner. I felt I had conquered the language. But it's not just grammar, there is a rhythm and music, and idiomatic references that one can get wrong.

For example there is a running joke in one comedy series where an Italian, whenever there is a pairing of things, gets them the "wrong" way round - raining dogs and cats, kidney and steak pie, at it tongs and hammer, ... there are thousands of these pairings in English that always go in a certain order Jack and Jill, never Jill and Jack. An AI is unlikely to correct such things because there is actually nothing wrong - but they sound foreign.

As to 'paradox' that is easy enough for anyone to misunderstand, almost to the point where to understand it would be paradoxical. :groan:

Truth is though it's a balancing act between not allowing anyone to be above the law versus being a banana republic that throws their political opponents in jail. — Hanover

Banana republics traditionally do both, so it's more a matter of choosing which end of the banana you want to eat and which end you want to pratfall on.

Skip to the end if you like, and see what convicted felon Trump said back when he was committing his felonies, about his opponent, Hilary Clinton, who he supposed might be charged with a felony.

Everything he says about others, is the projection of what he really thinks and feels about himself. As soon as I can afford to, I will pity him for his tortured existence.

"He's incredibly conflicted and corrupt."

The cult is exposed in the nature of this defence.

Back in my misspent youth I had occasion to be shown the certain sign of guilt in the form of the "too many excuses" defence. A fence had been damaged a boy was questioned and his response has remained in my mind for fifty years, as equivalent to a confession: "It wasn't me. — And anyway, it was an accident."

The defence in the case contradicted itself in just this way, and @NOS4A2 has done the same thing again. In order for Trump to be innocent, the judge, the jury, the prosecutor, the legal system, the constitution, and crucially, all his previous lawyers and accountants have to be guilty. And also we who are watching.

It is beyond reasonable doubt, because there is zero evidence, and because it involves way too many conspiracies, that this defence is false.


The trial defence was the same: Stormy lied there was no affair Pecker lied, there was no coverup Then there was the ludicrous defence that any payment to a lawyer must be for legal expenses, then the accountant lied, then his own lawyer at the time was rogue and did all without Trump knowing, Everyone was guilty except Trump.

"It doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense, it's not true." Judge Judy.

↪frank Why would owning something mean someone was likely to take it from them? — flannel jesus

Why would you need to assert ownership of something no one else wanted?

Why do some societies enshrine private property? — frank

I think Marx went into it in detail, but the advent of agriculture, memorialised as 'the fall' from a state of nature into the condition of bring forth bread by the sweat of thy brow begins the idea of 'property' that could be cooperatively or privately owned, with title originating in the hard work of clearing and fencing and improving land. Before that, though a tribe had a territory, it was not clear whether land belonged to people or people belonged to land.

So, I believe that throughout history people have every right to be paranoid or skeptical. — Shawn

Yes, I'm not going to argue against that, except to note that in the derogatory sense, paranoia is a mental condition that entails some disconnection from reality - not a rights issue. Because we absolutely need to trust others every day to conduct our lives, and because we know that there are bad actors, trust goes along with distrust, and is never absolute, after infancy.

But I maintain that bona fide, as honesty and trust, is what makes any cooperation at all possible; without it, the individual is completely isolated and communication is impossible. even deceit becomes impossible because no one is listening, except for the physical deceits of feints and camouflage, etc.

And the solitary man does not survive.

If you live in Ukraine or Gaza, I can understand, but even there... war is also a cooperative affair.

what should one do about this lack of congeniality in the main stream media? — Shawn

Call it out, rebut, complain, argue, present evidence, demand truth and honesty. Look for the honest actors in the media.

Well there is a saying that only the paranoid survive, which I see fully fleshed out about how we arrive at our decisions based on the current information we have. — Shawn

It is a false saying. Only the cooperative survive in a species such as human that is highly social and highly cooperative. We have to trust each other, even to interact as we are doing right now, otherwise our words would have no value or meaning. One has to start with trust and then be wary of deceit.

I go to the shop, I pay for my food with a card, and trust that the whole human system of bank and card readers and so on works fairly and that the food is fit to eat, and so on. I trust that the bus will tae me home in good order, and at the time on the timetable or thereabouts. One does not notice all the everyday interactions that one relies on to live, but notices the exceptions which are the scammers and cheats. Call them out, call them out, but don't lose your trust in humanity.

I know that it's no longer the times of the Roman Republic; but, seemingly bona fide interactions are hard to come by outside of the law and jurisprudence system(?) — Shawn

Bona fide is the sine qua non of communication.

Therefore every response to your op confirms performatively that bona fide interactions are the rule, not the exception. This is necessarily the case as the lie is necessarily parasitic on truthful communication. At the point where one cannot ever trust the response, one stops asking even such paranoid meta questions as this one.

I am a vegan and have been so for 18 years. — Truth Seeker

Gooder than God. :lol:

I'm sorry. I already said that, but I hadn't realised your total fragility. Just ignore me, and I'll do likewise.

I didn't proselytise. I responded to what you said. The word proselytise means "to induce someone to convert to one's faith" - that clearly is not what I did. — Truth Seeker

No you didn't. I didn't reference the Bible, you did. You responded to a dog whistle like a fanatic because I made a joke that involved the word "God". Other religions are available.

That's not justice. — Truth Seeker

Of course it is. IF God made you, he fucking owns you. Go talk to your breakfast about justice and convince it it wants to be eaten.

Don't proselytise dude, it's considered uncool on this site. And if you want to argue about the Bible, do it with someone who takes the Bible seriously - that's not me!

How is doing what I like the same as justice? — Truth Seeker

My garden - my rules. Slugs and caterpillars are sent to hell, and philosophers get fresh vegetables in due season. When you make a universe, you get to set the rules. You don't let your creation boss you about.

Like I suggested to Mr Bee: since climate change denial and spamming this thread with stupid bullshit doesn’t warrant a banning, the ignore list feature works brilliantly. — Mikie

Yeah, but I'm not trying to convince myself, but to prevent the world from drowning in bullshit for the sake of the community. All that is required for the lie to triumph is for truth tellers to be silent.

Imagine some world of the future where people are picking up the pieces from some cataclysm and they develop a collective. No one owns anything. Everything that's produced is pooled and shared. I'm wondering about whether this is something that dwells in the human potential or not. — frank

Respect for personal property is not enshrined in nature, it is established cooperatively in human societies. In an emergency, the government will requisition whatever it deems to be required for the protection of the people, and that limitation to ownership will also be cooperatively established. It seems hard for some to understand that one cannot have ownership unless others recognise and respect that relation.

Folks might like to read 'The Dispossessed', by Ursula K LeGuin, for a plausible imagining of a cooperative anarchy.

There are some who argue — Jussi Tennilä

There are some who argue that the moon is made of blue cheese. Just say "NO".

While extreme weather due to climate change is on the rise, Matt Devitt, chief meteorologist at Wink News in southwest Florida, says that’s not what’s behind the uptick in falling iguanas – and in turn, the increase in falling iguana warnings and recommended protocol. Instead, we’re hearing about it more frequently because iguanas aren’t native to Florida and their population is beginning to surge.

"The iguanas were brought over from Central and South America in the 1960s and '70s, but the population was limited then," says Devitt. "They’ve exploded in population over the past decade, which is why people are starting to notice what the cold does to them."

Do you read your own sources at all, or is the headline enough for you? Here is a marginal population way outside its normal range and barely surviving until the climate had sufficiently warmed for them to thrive, and now they have become noticeable. But fool that you are, you think this is some kind of counter evidence. What a pathetic idiot!

OK, one more little try.

Evolution relies on what you call 'mistakes' as you well enough know. And the rate of copying 'mistakes' evolves itself because 'error correcting genes' are also a thing. Thus 'mistakes' or as I like to call them 'variations' are more common in some parts of the genome than others.

they will likely push for equally reckless solutions like geoengineering. — Mr Bee

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L1 is the one I want, between sun and Earth, and some of that space blanket reflective stuff. It's that bad right now that I want to do some reckless geoengineering If we start to get cold, we can roll up the blanket later. I wonder if they deliver?

If a gene is copied correctly then there is no mistake. If it is copied incorrectly then there is a mistake. — Truth Seeker

"Exactly", I will allow, but "correctly" implies that the gene was "correct" in the first place, which by hypothesis it never was.

Flaws imply design. You might want to put that to your mechanical chat-buddy, which appears to have a few design flaws of its own.

Every species came into existence as a result of genetic mistakes. — Truth Seeker

You do recognise that this is strictly nonsensical. don't you? There can be no mistake unless there is a plan. :scream: