this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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Sure. Ethically speaking, anyone who's not an act utilitarian will accept the "greater evil" in some circumstances, and if you don't, it leads to some absurd conclusions, like chopping up a healthy person to get organ transplants to save five. Another example would be, "If you don't kill someone for me, I'll kill two people." I can't prevent every bad thing from happening, but I can control my own actions and choose not to be a party to bad things.
Got it. Voting, in your mind, is akin to two different examples of murder.
It sounds to me like you’d opt out of giving someone the Heimlich maneuver so as not to bruise their abdomen, letting them choke to death.
You can pretend to opt out but not voting or voting third is a choice not to help prevent the worse outcome. You’ve participated in bringing that to fruition.
I thought you were asking for why one would be accept a greater evil, generally speaking, so I demonstrated why lesser evilism is not automatically the correct position.
Nope, that is blatantly false. Not voting for either major candidate, so by definition I haven't participated in getting either of them elected.
Sure.
And a doctor who refuses to participate in the harm of removing a limb letting the person die from gangrene is “not participating” and not responsible for the outcome.
Whether he's responsible is one thing, but claiming that the doctor participated in giving him gangrene would be completely absurd.
No. You’ve incorrectly identified what I implied the doctor has participated in. You’d like for me to have said the doc somehow gave the person gangrene but I didn’t and did not imply that.
The doctor did however participate in letting a person die. He could have done otherwise but chose not to.
You see, removing a limb is a harm and he just can’t bring himself to do it. He will sleep soundly knowing he did no harm.
You said that I participated in "Bringing that to fruition" not in "letting that happen."
"Participating in letting something happen" is a very odd turn of phrase. The definition of participate (per google) is, "take part in an action or endeavour." If what you're doing is not taking part in an action, then you aren't participating, by definition.
If someone on the other side of the world starves to death, are you a participant in that?
We’re comparing voting, which I can do, to helping someone I don’t know exists on the other side of the world?
Thanks for the thread bud. Plenty here for people to see your thought process. It sucks by the way.
There's information about world hunger available on the web, I don't see how choosing not to be informed about it absolves you of responsibility.
For more smug ethics lessons. Press 1 or say: “Bore me to death.”
You know that there will still be an election, right? Not voting simply says you’re fine with either candidate winning. Which clearly shows your entitlement as you must not have much to worry about. It’s this, or you don’t even live in the states.
So pick one: