SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
khallow (3766)
The Fine Print: The following are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Monday February 13, 23
10:16 PM
Several times this month already, I've been reminded of one of the paradoxes of ethics theory. The theory routinely deals with difficult edge cases, like the Trolley Problem where one is asked to chose between subtly different negative outcomes with inaction being one of the choices.
While there's a bit of that in the real world (such as accident edge cases for automated driving), the usual ethics case with the highest body count is choosing whether or not to screw over a huge mass of people (example). It's not remotely hard though the water routinely get muddied, when the targets are demonized first or tools that should be used to fix things are actually used to make it worse (such as FDA regulations helping to enforce the scarcity of Epipen competitors).
That's why I think the true ethics problems of this era aren't the hard Trolley problems, but rather how to reign in huge ethical lapses and failures made because someone gets something out of it. They are easy to figure out, but they keep happening over and over.
While there's a bit of that in the real world (such as accident edge cases for automated driving), the usual ethics case with the highest body count is choosing whether or not to screw over a huge mass of people (example). It's not remotely hard though the water routinely get muddied, when the targets are demonized first or tools that should be used to fix things are actually used to make it worse (such as FDA regulations helping to enforce the scarcity of Epipen competitors).
That's why I think the true ethics problems of this era aren't the hard Trolley problems, but rather how to reign in huge ethical lapses and failures made because someone gets something out of it. They are easy to figure out, but they keep happening over and over.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
(1)
You're dead, Jim.
-- McCoy, "Amok Time", stardate 3372.7
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday February 13, @10:47PM (6 children)
Follow the money.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13, @11:03PM (4 children)
> Follow the money.
It's moving too fast.
- The Pain of Listening To Twitter Censorship Testimony [substack.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @06:36AM
Ethics of burying a post that questions the ethics of internet sites burying posts.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 14, @04:17PM (2 children)
Trump was still President when that story was allegedly censored by the US government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @05:15PM (1 child)
So Trump made Twitter ban Trump from Twitter?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday February 14, @07:04PM
I mean, if the shoe fits.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday February 14, @06:41PM
And collect [moralmachine.net] the data [my-goodness.net]. It's not an answer, but it's at least a large-population perspective. But if you want to really confront the trolley problem, make it count [youtu.be].
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @03:17AM (33 children)
Indeed they are very easy to figure out, but you must acknowledge the personal lapses and failures that allow these ethics problems to keep happening over and over, because those people also get something out of not making waves and just go with the flow. They rationalize it by blaming the "system", or some other phony abstraction. A so called "good" cop that doesn't expose the bad cop is not a good cop. Letting it happen and making it happen go hand in hand.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday February 14, @04:18AM (2 children)
It was a classic composition fallacy. Because these systems are made of people, then it's just people. And thus, people are to be blamed - individually no less (halfway through he switched to blaming me personally for the negative results of elections everywhere). "Blame", "responsibility", etc don't make sense in such a delusional context.
Basically, he blamed a system - here, human behavior - without even a slight regard for the implicit assumptions of something more that he made, such as the presence of a "sheriff" in the title of the thread requiring a great deal of infrastructure in order to make sense (at the least, you get a system of rules and some sort of enforcement infrastructure).
When we rationalize why things don't work with nebulous evasions, we get this.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @07:48PM (1 child)
Yeah, that didn't go unnoticed... but
.. you are still wagging the dog, just making excuses, hence these abstractions you create, trying to externalize the reasons for personal choices... you're just trying to deflect. Really, you could just say that free will doesn't exist, then I might agree that "the infrastructure made you do it"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday February 15, @01:05AM
Infrastructure is a huge tail.
Collective problems are solved with collective solutions like sheriffs, elections, and all that other infrastructure. I can't personally choose for everyone else. You keep neglecting that. Hence, the composition fallacy that's been committed all along.
If it were all about personal choices, then why aren't your personal choices good enough to fix all that corruption?
Azuma Hazuki brought up the most relevant point of all, the fallacy of the stolen concept. None of your side of the argument makes any sense without the inclusion of the concept of successfully working infrastructure. To wit, you are "stealing" from the concept of infrastructure and its concrete examples and then claiming you ignore infrastructure. It's huge cognitive dissonance that destroys your argument since you wouldn't have a viable argument in the first place without the concept of infrastructure and those concrete examples.
And let's give some simple examples of how infrastructure helps us be better people. First in the other discussion, there was the rules and the sheriff enforcing the rules. A good, well thought out set of rules and an honest sheriff results in a pretty low corruption society compared to one that doesn't have those. There are various tricks for making laws better and sheriffs more honest - a formal process for creating and changing law and more sheriffs and ombudsmen. For power in general, there are natural ways to break up power - for example the classic triumvirate of law making: one branch makes the laws - typically a legislature, one branch enforces the laws - typically a single head or small committee, and one branch interprets the law -typically a court or tribunal. I can go on. Obviously, such power structures can and do decay. But a sensible design for a new government or refurbishment of an existing one can last a long time before it falls apart.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 14, @04:21PM (28 children)
Or, realize that we're not computers, we're definitely not infallible, there is no such things as perfect knowledge and even our fancy maths stop working when you start looking close enough.
In other words: just do your best to make life less shitty and stop trying to cram the entire universe into a perfect model
"There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (which is a good thing otherwise there would be no more new science to do)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @08:01PM (27 children)
Nobody, least of all me, said anything about perfection or infallibility. Those are just strawmen to deflect the conversation away from the fact that a "system", with all its "ethics", is a perfect reflection of its people, nothing more, nothing less. You all are looking for a philosopher king to rule us all, when the truth is that we have to act collectively, as individuals, to modify our ethics, so yes, we have to "just do our best to make life less shitty", that would work if everybody simply did that.. Regardless, the choice to do so is personal, each individual has to act accordingly to make it work
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 14, @11:14PM (26 children)
The Trolly Problem itself presumes perfect knowledge/infallibility in that you know that flipping the switch will have the effect of killing one vs many. And I argue that modeling our system by taking this flawed singular model and just multiplying it by a bajillion people is a poor approach to understand the issues.
Instead, we should apply the tools we have for understanding systems to understand "the system."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @01:01AM
The issue is this: do we play along to get along? Or do we stand up, even if solo, for the "right thing"™? It is a deeply personal question, and choice.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 15, @02:22PM (24 children)
My take is that most of the moral issues just aren't that complicated in themselves. The big moral dilemmas that harm people aren't these tough cases whether a Trolley problem or a complex system with lots of issues. It's simple things like "How did we get into a situation where someone can get away with charging $500 for a dose of EpiPen?" Even now, EpiPen costs around $700 and a generic version costs about half as much, plus this one weird trick of raising the price arbitrarily works for a lot of other medicines - the underlying problem isn't really solved.
Or "should we enter into an unjust war that might kill a lot of people?" The only things complex about those dilemmas are the excuses for performing the misdeed. My take is that the biggest ethical quandary is how to build or in some cases, rebuild systems that prevent these most blatant abuses without creating worse problems in the process.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @04:34PM
Now if only you were capable of recognizing reality instead of believing Fox propaganda. Then yes, morality just would not be that complicated!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @05:25PM (22 children)
There you go again, rambling on about "systems".. as if you can't fetch your own pail of water
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 16, @06:37PM (21 children)
I take it you're the AC "systems" guy who can't be bothered to understand the difference between 1 pail of water and 340 million pails of water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @12:42AM (20 children)
I understand perfectly, you are just hand waving... it's 340 million people who have to learn how to cooperate and show respect, each individual has to take his own steps. All corruption there is in a system is due to a multitude (frequently a majority) of corrupt individuals. You're still just making excuses, trying to externalize the individuals' personal failures
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 17, @03:50AM (19 children)
"Learn", "cooperate", and "show respect". Thus appears the system you deny.
Particularly, you. Your entire viewpoint revolves around the concepts you ignored. That's classic stolen concept fallacy and one of the profound corruptions that Ayn Rand railed against back in the day.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 17, @03:59AM (7 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @10:07AM (2 children)
Seems our dear and soggy khallow is trying to seduce us into a discussion systemic racial discrimination, and the attendant CRT monitors that follow upon it. Bad faith, Hallow.
And, seriously, quoting Ayn Rand on philosophy? No one who is serious in philosophy does that. She is the Jordan Peterson of philosophy, and was even before Graham Hancock was the Jordon Peterson of archeology, and Joe Rogan was the Gym Jordan of whatever it is Joe goes on about.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 17, @06:40PM (1 child)
I've quoted worse on philosophy. Seriously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @11:38PM
Since you can identify they are worse, I would think that you wouldn't want to brag about quoting yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @04:32PM (3 children)
Here [npr.org] is what rightwing bullshit like Rand gets you, just a bunch of lying grifters that convince you reality is not real. Sad how well they worked on you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 17, @06:40PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @08:11PM (1 child)
If only you were kidding
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 18, @02:13PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @06:34PM (10 children)
"Stolen concepts" is your new tabloid buzzword of the week, eh? Yes, you and Ayn Rand (of al people) do think alike.. That would explain your problem. Can't even stay on topic. Keep making those excuses, it is amusing
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 17, @06:44PM (9 children)
Azuma introduced it and it was beautifully appropriate to the problem child of the day.
I guess, if you can't find anything serious to complain about, you can always complain that they're not sufficiently on topic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @07:05PM (4 children)
If you think it applies here, then obviously you have no concept of what it means, it's just a convenient sounding meaningless cliche for you to use for blame passing purposes. It explains perfectly why you completely fail to understand what I am saying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @09:43AM
This has never given khallow pause in the past, why should it now? The boy's a stable genius, I tell ya, a vending machine stable.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 18, @02:18PM (2 children)
I already explained why it applies. It's not math-level proof, but good enough. I also explained why the fallacy of composition applied. Your gaslighting is unnecessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @08:26PM (1 child)
You have explained and confirmed nothing but your personal fantasies and misconceptions.
Exactly, because the math proves you are wrong again, therefore your speculations are not "good enough", it's just mass media nonsense
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 18, @11:53PM
My "personal fantasies and misconceptions"? I wasn't the one going on and on about the supposed irrelevance of societal and systems infrastructure while every argument was wholly dependent on that infrastructure. That's the stolen concept fallacy.
Nor conflating individual and collective action such as ignoring that an election is not a personal decision. That's the fallacy of composition - asserting that the characteristics of a component is the same as the characteristics of the whole. It's not.
These two fallacies doom the argument: it shows the dominance of the concept of infrastructure in every post, and asserts silly things like personal responsibility for the actions of several hundred million people.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 19, @05:26PM (3 children)
Do you even understand what the informal fallacy of the stolen concept is? It's when your argument is being made against one of the pieces or premises necessary for its own construction.
In your case, you argue for a rational, humanist ethos, but you support your case with Rand and other profoundly irrational, anti-humanist "thinkers" and their output. As stated, this is the epistemological equivalent of sitting on a tree branch and sawing it off where it meets the tree trunk.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 19, @11:07PM (2 children)
Indeed. Such as this thread you are in where someone repeatedly dismisses the power of societal and systems infrastructure while all their arguments are in terms of that infrastructure.
In other words, reality didn't get through the Azuma filter. I disagree with your assessment of Rand and those unmentioned "other" "thinkers" because I think you're greatly misrepresenting/misunderstanding their viewpoints. There is no fallacy because the basic premises haven't been satisfied.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 22, @05:28AM (1 child)
Just because you can't (or won't) deal with reality doesn't mean it stops existing, Hallow. Rand's major fallacy is a combination of two things, the "objects over people" priority-inversion bug and a composition fallacy. She is unable to reckon with emergent behavior in human societies, in part because of the previous problem. Economics and money are for humans, not the other way around. Until you understand this, and have a change of heart, you are never going to get out of this quagmire.
Don't die stuck in this mindset. You really will not like what happens to you afterwards.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 22, @06:31AM
Show this sentence is even remotely relevant. Sorry, you're arguing at the same level as Mr. Personal-responsibility-for-all-US-elections guy. Repeating the same thing over and over without any support for that assertion. For years I might add.
If that's true, then you should be able to show it, right? My take is that anyone who names a villain "Wesley Mouch" probably has a fallacy or two in their arguments somewhere and there's that white hat/black hat casting. So I wouldn't be surprised should you have evidence for your claim.
How many humans will we harm because economics and money are for humans not the other way around? Brutal, destructive implementations of high minded economic ideals aren't even infrequent. When I hear something like what you just wrote, I get the impression you just don't get economics.
Imagine if I got into the face of someone "Hammers are for humans, not the other way around!" That person would be like "Go away crazy person, I'm just putting some nails in." The pretense of caring whether a tool somehow betters humans doesn't actually help make it better for humans. Working systems do that. I've expressed ideas [soylentnews.org] on that in the past. Unfortunately, you weren't receptive then or now.
I'll take my chances. I figure given how badly you mess up elsewhere, that you're missed the mark here as well.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday February 14, @06:43PM
Imma just leave this here [npr.org] about building codes, then.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 14, @03:45AM (2 children)
No one remembers, child . . .
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 14, @04:41PM
Is that the one where you destroy programs that help people after taking advantage of those very same programs yourself?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @09:46PM
Your buddy EF could use a refresher https://soylentnews.org/politics/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=53771&page=1&cid=1292062#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @03:56AM (2 children)
About the Trolley Problem and similar ethics issues, one good way to address the issue is the principle of double effect [wikipedia.org]. The origins of it are in Catholicism, where St. Thomas Aquinas used it to justify the morality of killing in self defense. Despite its religious origins, the principle is often invoked for secular purposes, particularly in medicine. This principle involves an action which will produce a good outcome (e.g., protecting one's own life) while also causing an evil outcome (e.g., someone else is killed in the act of defending oneself). From the Wikipedia page, here are the four conditions for an act to be ethically justifiable according to this principle:
I don't agree with referring to these ethics problems as edge cases when you take into account the full scope of issues that are covered by this principle. Killing in self defense is just as much of an issue in the 21st century as it was in the 13th century when Aquinas wrote Summa Theologica. It also applies to issues like war and euthanasia. Its principles are incorporated into many legal systems, where intent is a factor in determining whether a crime has been committed, and if so, the severity of the crime.
That said, I do agree with your assessment that the greatest ethical issues of the 21st century don't involve this principle. Aquinas wrote about this in the 13th century, and many other philosophers have since offered their own ideas on the principle. Ethical dilemmas like the Trolley Problems are new versions of very old problems, and there is substantial guidance on how to resolve such ethical paradoxes. I agree that we don't have as good of a handle on how to address various ethical problems where the issue is less ethically complex but there aren't centuries of accumulated wisdom on how to properly resolve or prevent them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 14, @04:27PM
I think the issues we're dealing with are the emergent properties of a bunch of, interconnected, incredibly complex systems and not so much about personal morality in the first place.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 16, @09:37AM
I disagree because I think there are a variety of Trolley problems where there are multiple exclusive choices which satisfy all four points of the double effect principle. The inability to come up with a solid answer is exactly what make these edge cases.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 14, @04:03AM (16 children)
It's simple, Hallow: people are more important than not-people, whether the not-people in question is wealth, ideologies, or whatever else you have. You are one of the last people on this forum who should be using the word. It turns into a zombified, blasphemous parody of itself as it passes your lips. We've been over this before: you claim a humanistic, naturalistic ethics, but your actions commit the fallacy of the stolen concept, just as sure as sitting on a tree branch and sawing it off at the trunk leads to a fall.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday February 14, @04:56AM (15 children)
So what? Should we thus harm people because that's true? The world has a lot of concepts and tools are that are useful to real people, not merely not-people.
In other words, Azuma feelz again. Again, not interesting.
How about rather than your usual bad faith argument, you actually try to walk through that argument with reasoning, evidence, etc?
For a real world example of a stolen concept where I understood it right away, we have "Takes a better people to elect a better sheriff" [soylentnews.org]. The AC asserts that people don't elect "better sheriffs" because of bad biological heritage (original sin in other words). I rebutted that with the argument that we have systems with varying difference in corruption right now, indicating that it's more than just people at fault here - the infrastructure of the system is also responsible. I start poking holes in the argument because he repeatedly assumes existence of infrastructure and its impact on corruption from the start on: "sheriff", "elect", "built and maintained", "Differences are measured in degree.", "responsibility", "psychiatrist". In other words, he argues against the importance of the structure of societies and systems via infrastructure while using many concepts that only make sense in terms of such infrastructure. This is the very definition of the fallacy of the stolen concept.
So what is the stolen concept that I dismiss while assuming its axioms/precepts?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @10:32AM (6 children)
Looks like you are trying to be ethical. Do you need a philosopher? Too bad, we are fresh out. Try watching The Good Place, instead.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 14, @12:27PM (5 children)
What need would that be? I'm not collecting them, for example.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 14, @04:36PM (4 children)
Well I definitely think of "ethics" more as following the rules and playing fair.
And "morality" as the good and evil stuff.
So for khallow I would say you are ethical. We're here to argue with each other and so far as I can tell you mostly participate in good faith.
On the other hand, you are definitely going straight to hell when you die, bro, sorry to break it to you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @06:16PM (3 children)
Khallow mostly argues in good faith.... mostly......
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday February 15, @06:29PM (2 children)
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @02:09AM (1 child)
And khallow going on about ethics in good faith is kind of what one would expect from a professional consulting wingman.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Thursday February 16, @02:39AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @12:43AM (4 children)
Pure word salad.. but, despite it being a miserable failure (and a bit redundant at this point), I admire your effort and stamina!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @02:41AM
It's a lot like the old dot-coms. They may take a loss on every transaction but, by God, do they try to make up for it in volume!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 16, @12:21AM (2 children)
It checks the boxes. I'm not interested in investing more effort.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @08:52PM (1 child)
?? Totally meaningless and non-responsive, eh, par for the course
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 18, @03:01PM
And I take it from your clipped, content-free posts that you don't really mind replies that are unresponsive and meaningless. Right?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @10:09PM (2 children)
The individual behind the Azuma account is a racist, which is why they think the way they do.
The proof can be seen in this comment [soylentnews.org].
For those who do not know, Clarence Thomas [wikipedia.org] is an African American.
Azuma Hazuki's writing of "Uncle (Ruckus)" is an allusion to the racial slur "Uncle Tom" [wikipedia.org]. Quoting from Wikipedia:
By using this allusion to an insulting racial epithet, the individual behind the Azuma account has shown itself to be a racist.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @08:24AM
The AC behind this comment is an misogynist incel, and a pervert, and probably a Republican. Clarence is a traitor to his nation, his class, his weight class, and to his momma. Azuma Haruki is a hero of SoylentNews, standing up for what is right and true. She reminds me a bit of Starlight on the Boyz, though less naive.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @07:25PM
* That feeling when you encounter someone too stupid to notice the GOP is racist *
Tjey call it the facepalm
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @04:09PM (1 child)
As you get older, you may find that your ethics don't seem to be as hard as they used to be.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 14, @08:35PM
Yep, soft ethics is a very serious problem amongst the older generations!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 25, @02:41PM (2 children)
So don't do rightwing media, mmkay, it'll only mess you up mmkay. There was this guy, he fell down the rabbit hole of hatred and bigotry, divorced two times mmkay, and now he has absolutely trashed his own name, mmkay? [deadline.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 01, @02:02PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13, @06:59PM
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/03/trump-ukraine-hannity-fox-news-russia-take-over/ [motherjones.com]
You are rather slow khallow, here catch up!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday March 23, @04:24PM
Ethics is easy. We know there are unethical people, and we know that the people who are charged with reigning them in are also unethical. Money is an easy target, but those targeting it are equally unethical, so dismantling capitalism isn't the answer because unethical people will just take their greed off the balance sheet and stuff it in to warehouses and gulags.
If ethics were society's most pressing problem, we'd be having a hard time finding things that are wrong. We're nowhere near running out of moral failures. Would that we could power the grid with them. Maybe we can, but somebody got paid to say otherwise.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.