Oh boy I love learning stuff from these kind of debates.
sort of?
If you sacrifice in the hopes of gaining more, whatever you gain has to be worth more than what you sacrificed.
If you sacrifice potential to prevent loss, you’re not gaining or losing anything in reality.
But in the first case, simply choosing to act will cause you to lose something.
Now on the other hand, for an omniscient being, there is no such thing as potential.
You are losing something. You’re losing the opportunity cost
…let’s not mince words.
A chess analogy would be that:
1st situation: you can sacrifice your rook and maybe get their queen.
2nd situation: you can move your knight, which means that you can’t get that good position you were looking for, but you can stop them from taking your bishop.
Weird loopy legal language
This conversation got too smart for me to take part in now
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Exactly
Same here. I have cursory knowledge regarding the economical, political and social systems of society. I am horrible at debates too as I barely partake in conversation in real life due to my hesitative personality.
Both of the situations involve sacrificing an opportunity since when you lose your rook you lose the potential the rook had to be used. Both situations can also be viewed as both a gain or loss prevention. When you take out their queen, they lose the opportunity to use it against you so it’s loss prevention just like finding a cure to a disease is loss prevention because it prevents the loss of the people who would’ve otherwise died from it. When you stop them from taking your bishop, it’s a gain because you gained the opportunity to use your bishop in the future. The analogy you made doesn’t prove that sacrificing opportunities for gain in order to prevent loss is better than sacrificing something else to get potential gain. In actuality, this is just another biased comparison, and I can do the same thing:
would you rather sacrifice your pawn to possibly advance another pawn to the end of the board or would you rather put your pawns in a deadlock with the enemy pawns so that you won’t lose one of your pawns?
There are some things that we inherently know are bad.
Nature is full of rape, murder and people literally eating babies. A human hunter, upon seeing a pregnant deeer, would probaly ignore it, and look for a better target. A wolf, or wild dog, would look at one and say “Ha, we’re taking the bitch down, stomach first!”. But, Nature also isn’t sapient, so it isn’t doing it on purpose. Does this still make it evil?
Look at dolphins for example. Thier are many articles and examples of dolphins killing for sport, but does that make them evil?
Yes. Dolphins are fucking psychopaths, who will kill for sport.
Shall we return to the problem at hand?
Firstly, I argue that good and evil are purely objective, and that all other values are subjective ways to measure objective good and evil.
You argue that no, good and evil are subjective to the society’s point of view, and you provide the example of the cure and the murderer.
Your first use of this states:
I respond as follows: you would, if you knew the numbers. I state that justice, the idea you claim would prevent this, is a construct designed to maintain utilitarian benefit.
You continue, arguing this.
Here’s where it gets a little off the tracks, because I don’t really see how this goes against my utilitarian argument.
You first claim that taking risks sometimes has good outcomes, but then you claim that one would never let a convicted murderer go free because it’s impossible to state that they would do good.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
I’m sorry if I made it sound this way, but these statements aren’t universal truths. They’re likelihoods, statements that are likely to be true based on past evidence.
Simplified: I stated if gains > losses, then it should be undertaken. You state society would not agree. You use the old quote “Most of society doesn’t use a purely utilitarian framework because they care about things like justice and fairness even if they lead to less happiness and wellbeing overall” to back this up.
But the problem is I’ve already shown this to be untrue, that society does use a purely utilitarian framework within the limit that they cannot know everything and thus systems must be set up to achieve utilitarian goals.
But society has to know that the gains and potential gains outweigh the losses and potential losses.
You’re attempting to apply human values to nature, which isn’t really a good idea.
However, you can.
All you have to do is figure out the worth of a dolphin, whatever it killed, the pregnant deer, etc.
The real value of each of those?
That is what is the problem.
You can’t know what those values are.
That’s how subjective values arise. But good and evil are truly objective, which are determined by values unknown to all but a truly omniscient being.
Which, ironically makes a universal truth obvious in the end.
Good and evil don’t matter at all.
But, I, subjectively, find those things to be disturbing. I find my opinion to hold value. So it does have value. Thus, nature is evil. If nothing matters, then you should make your own meaning.
Here’s a brief overview of the conversation up to this point to provide some clarity:
I said that society would not use a purely utilitarian framework, instead claiming that they also value justice and fairness
You said that justice is just a rule of thumb for achieving utilitarian objectives and not an end in itself
Then I presented a version of the trolley problem in which some people could be subjected to a dangerous experiment in order to save others. Since doing an experiment on people which could kill them isn’t fair or just, it wouldn’t be undertaken by society even if the benefits would outweigh the losses
Then you said it’s unknowable if the benefits would outweigh the losses so the optimal utilitarian course of action would be not to undertake it
Then I said that it’s unknowable if the benefits will outweigh the losses for any action but it’s still good to do some actions and then I followed up with the example of imprisoning convicted murderers
Then you said we can’t guarantee that not imprisoning them will lead to a positive outcome, we imprison them. You made two examples of things we shouldn’t do because of a lack of guarantees
I said that it’s a double standard to say that we should reject the experimenting on the basis that it’s not guaranteed to result in a net gain and then say we should imprison convicted murderers even though that’s also not guaranteed to result in a net gain
Then you said that it’s unlikely that the experiment will succeed but it’s likely that imprisoning a convicted murderer will be good for society, thus society won’t do the experiment but will do the imprisoning
Then I said that the experimenting thing was hypothetical and I didn’t give you any information you could’ve used to determine its likelihood of success. Then I said that most of society would not necessarily agree with any action where the potential benefits outweigh the potential costs
You said that society wouldn’t agree with those actions because they can’t know that the net gain from those actions will be positive
Then I said that this is inconsistent with your justification of imprisoning convicted murderers
Then you said “this is the specific example of the experiment”
Then I asked you if that means guaranteed results net gain is required for the experiment but not for imprisoning murderers
and you responded by saying that if society had the option to sacrifice something or take losses in order to gain potential benefits they shouldn’t risk it but if they’re sacrificing potential benefits to prevent potential losses then they can take that risk
and then I said you’re basing your moral framework on reference dependence or in other words that you value a potential gain less than a potential loss prevention
Then you said if you sacrifice in the hopes of gaining more then what you sacrifice has to be worth less than what you gain and you said you aren’t gaining or losing anything if you sacrifice potential gain to prevent potential loss
I said that you are losing something which is the opportunity for gain
Then you made an analogy where at first glance it seems that the situation where potential gain is sacrificed in order to prevent potential loss is better than the situation where a regular loss is incurred for a potential gain.
Then I showed how these are actually both sacrificing potential gain for the sake of loss prevention or how both their benefits can be viewed as both gain and loss prevention. The analogy you made used properties that are accidental to them being a sacrifice of potential gain for loss prevention or a regular sacrifice for potential gain in order to make one look better than the other and I said you used a biased comparison. I then made a different biased comparison to show the principle
Then you provided your own history of these events and claimed that you’d proven at some point that society does, in fact, use a purely utilitarian framework and that’s how we got here
I don’t even know what to say at this point.
Religion is not subjective. There either is a supernatural intelligence or there is not a supernatural intelligence. Although people disagree, it is objective and binary. Everyone agrees on the definition.
Spiders are objectively evil.
raccist
I agree along with maths
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