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mvassilev
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posted August 03, 2009 07:13 PM |
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Totoro
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in User
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posted August 03, 2009 08:39 PM |
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Unless the person wants it, I wouldn't kill anyone even if the cancer was mine. I die anyway sooner or later and I would find it highly against my morales, and if I did, I would basically defy everything that I hold important in life so what would my prolonged life matter then?
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TheDeath
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posted August 03, 2009 09:14 PM |
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Quote:
But people are selfish, so yes, I would still kill somone to cure cancer.
Alright comrade Stalin, what if he kills you first? 
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Darkshadow
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posted August 03, 2009 09:16 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
But people are selfish, so yes, I would still kill somone to cure cancer.
Alright comrade Stalin, what if he kills you first?
Then you can't pretty much do anything cause your dead 
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Mamgaeater
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posted August 03, 2009 10:51 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
But people are selfish, so yes, I would still kill somone to cure cancer.
Alright comrade Stalin, what if he kills you first?
Then you can't pretty much do anything cause your dead
But what about wills?
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Protection From Everything.
dota
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Fauch
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posted August 03, 2009 10:57 PM |
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I think you can find fresh heart without having to kill someone (heart transplant)
well it's not easy, but if you can really bring the proof it will work, the medical community may help you.
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TheDeath
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posted August 03, 2009 11:11 PM |
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What about the oath they take when they say they'll harm no one? (medics I mean)
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antipaladin
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posted August 04, 2009 12:09 AM |
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you mean before or after they do hurt someone in order to secure there lifes.?
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types in obscure english
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JollyJoker
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posted August 04, 2009 08:37 AM |
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Well, I'm sorry, but I did exactly that: I answered to the problem. If you don't like the answer - you asked the question. If you accept only a certain range of answers, why ask questions?
That you threaten to punish me, because my morailty says, that killing one or more persons with some "good" for humanity in mind is exactly what Hitler did with the Jews, because you perceive that morality as thread-killing or off-topic, is certainly disconcerting. I suspect that you don't like it that I compare the morality you expressed with Hitler's. If you have a problem with that: do you really think it could have come so far as it actually did come, if everything would have been simply and easy in terms of morality? Here good, there evil, and the Germans all went mad suddenly?
The question, the way you asked was: would you kill, if you could secure a cure against cancer or stop pollution? You could follow this up with "How many would you be prepared to kill? One? Five? A hundred? A town? A city?"
The question might be instead: "If you could identify the evil of the world in one person, would you kill that person?" (And I think a lot of people are imagining killing Hitler with this kind of question and nod.) You could ask further now: "If the evil was identified as being more than one person, would you stop at 5? 50? A village? A town? A city? A country?"
Does that ring a bell somehow? Sound familiar in a sickening way?
You may intend this thread being light-hearted, but if it's about killing and morality, how can it be so, even if it's "hypothetical"?
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Mytical
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posted August 04, 2009 08:47 AM |
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Edited by Mytical at 09:25, 04 Aug 2009.
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Due to objections reopening the thread, and just keeping out of it for awhile.
Edit : I will answer YOUR questions Jolly, when I have the energy  .
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mvassilev
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posted August 04, 2009 09:18 AM |
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Quote:
"If you could identify the evil of the world in one person, would you kill that person?"
That raises the question of what "the evil of the world" means.
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JollyJoker
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posted August 04, 2009 09:28 AM |
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Hypothetical.  The same fundamental idea as with Mytical's question. Your scientific research has identified a serious factor for all the evil in the world, and killing that one person will solve that problem. It may be a dictator financing world terrorism, it may be the sole carrier of a deadly plague or virus, it may be the devil or an agent of the devil, it may be Dagobert Duck and his phantastillion of money which he uses to corrupt the world. It may be the world's largest and basically one and only drug baron, or a mad scientist poisoning the whole world with his ray-of-evil generator or a vile drug polluting the water. Whatever.
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mvassilev
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posted August 04, 2009 09:43 AM |
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Vague.
Nevertheless, I can unequivocally say that it depends on the situation. If a guy's been poisoning the water, AND it's seriously harming people, AND I can't bring him to the proper authorities, AND I can't convince/cajole/brainwash/threaten him into stopping, then I would.
In any case, I don't believe in actively punishing people for who they are - only for what they do. So if the said guy would walk by a reservoir and think, "Man, I really want to poison that water," - but never does - he shouldn't be punished as there is nothing to punish him for. Because punishing thoughtcrime is doubleplusungood.
You can't actively punish someone for being "evil". Murderers, rapists, thieves, embezzlers - yes. But not "evil people" in the abstract.
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JollyJoker
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posted August 04, 2009 09:49 AM |
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No, not vague. See it in a grander way, and remember it's hypothetical; the question is no different from Mytical's:
Your research has pointed you to the fact that you can pinpoint the evil of the world in one specific person. If you kill that person, the worls will become a better place. People will care more for each other, be less greedy and so on.
This is no different from: your researches have pinpointed you to the fact that the missing ingredient for a cure of cancer is a beating heart that you personally have to carve out of a living thorax.
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Mytical
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posted August 04, 2009 10:03 AM |
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Ok, now to answer some questions. One thing to note is that I am evil. Never have I said anything different.
How many would I destroy to cure cancer, pollution, stop evil? I would have little problem with saying 'very very many'. Now, while you put your eyes back into your head let me explain.
Cancer...kills a lot of people every year. So to save billions (down the road) from this disease it would not be hard for me to sacrifice even a city worth of people. Despite being an Empath, and having a strong moral compass. Why? Because to save a million, I would sacrifice a hundred. If a quarantine of 100 people would keep one million people from dying from some highly contagious disease, but guarantee the 100 people would die..I would give the order. So why not for billions? I may hate myself forever after, but if I KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that I saved so many, I would live with the guilt.
Pollution - Gets worse and worse every year, and it shows no signs of stopping. Eventually we could make our world uninhabitable, and all 7billion + people would die. So would I sacrifice a life, even my own, to stop it? Absolutely. Again I might feel terrible about it, but to save the lives of 7 billion people (eventually) I would do it. It is hard to make the decision, and you have to live with it, but I would feel it would be my duty.
If I could kill one person and eliminate ALL evil? It would not take me a nanosecond to decide that. I know people will look at me crazy, but I would even take out enough people to populate Texas to do that. Without hesitation, even if again I would have a TON of remorse.
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mvassilev
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posted August 04, 2009 10:09 AM |
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JJ:
No, I think Mytical's question is much more specific than yours. In his case, it would not be difficult to conceive that there is some ingredient within a live human heart that is impossible to reproduce elsewhere - it can only be gotten from a human. Then, there are specific results gained from this research. In your case, on the other hand, your goal is vague (destroy a source of evil), as is the result (less evil).
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JollyJoker
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posted August 04, 2009 10:26 AM |
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I'm not going to make a discussion out of this. If you find it more conceivable "that there is some ingredient within a live human heart that is impossible to reproduce elsewhere" for something which you know will cure cancer, than "there's some personal element within the living society that is corrupting it with its evil influence", then this is your opinion - I find them both pretty, umm, weird.
But I was under the impression that conceivability or weirdness is not to be a factor in this thread.
Note further that the "find volunteers" answer was excluded, if I'm not wrong, because that's no dilemma: you have to kill an innocent person, personally, and if you find THAT conceivable, I don't really know what to say.
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Mytical
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posted August 04, 2009 10:32 AM |
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Well, even I said I would try to find volunteers. Anyhow, lets pursue this just a bit further. Is there anything that you would find acceptable to sacrifice a single human life for? Not for any pagen ritual or anything, but something absolutely Guaranteed to work (backed by science or whatever). In as much as YOU would have to be the one to be the one killing somebody?
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JollyJoker
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posted August 04, 2009 10:48 AM |
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In theory, no.
Because in practise I can avoid the dilemma by killing MYSELF, if only an unspecific death was required, and I wouldn't be prepared to give my life for something that unspecific.
If I'm not prepared to give my own life I can't take the life of another.
So there's no dilemma if only ONE life has to be sacrificed, is it?
EDIT: Mytical, I just read your answer. Don't feel offended, please, when I say that in that case you'll certainly feel a bit of sympathy with Hitler, because it's just that what he wanted. This is not intended to be polemic or an attack or something, it's just trying to explain something. Antisemitism is pretty old, and lots of books have been written about that issue. The guy had been in WW I, fought there and seen terrible things - and of course he saw all kinds of deals being made, even in the face of after-war depression, inflation, unemployment and general misery. The view he developed, wasn't that much different from any conspiracy theory the world has seen - the difference was, he went ahead to act accordingly.
The problem is "knowledge"in that regard can never really be certain, so what is left is utter conviction.
If you want to, he was prepared to sactifice "Texas" for what was his conviction - and went ahead to do so.
Of course that's insane - but in a way it's consequent as well.
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Mytical
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posted August 04, 2009 11:06 AM |
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Actually I feel no sympathy for Hitler, because he singled out a specific type of person. Whereas for me everybody would be 'equal' with regards to race. I could easily say that you are condeming billions of people to die because you refuse to act, and indeed easily compare it to various nefarious people in history. After all, isn't allowing billions of people to die worse then killing a few people? However, I feel that would be unfair to you.
So what you are saying is, that if a town or city looked to you for guidence (for whatever reason) and you had word that somebody with a highly contagious, highly deadly disease was going to come into your city (for whatever reason) you would rather risk infecting people then eliminate the threat personally? (If that was the only way to do it).
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Message received.
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This thread is pages long: 
