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by greenshackle2
3346 days ago
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> So if you care about starving children, and apply the same rules you apply to children to insects, you'd be donating a lot to charity, basically. To insect charity yeah. Or spending a lot of time doing insect advocacy or something. Instead I donate for anti-malaria bed nets for kids and argue about animal ethics on the internet. > if I adhered to my own system I suppose I would have to silently watch a child get mauled by a coyote Right. Obviously no one but psychopaths act like that. I think what you call 'non-interference' ties in with the difference between the moral weight of action vs inaction. Most people's moral intuition draw a distinction between the two, and think action matters more. The interesting thing is that you can construct scenarios where that intuition changes. Don't know if that comic was aimed at me I can sympathize with black hat guy though I know he's supposed to be the annoying dick in the comic. I think it's interesting to take propositions to their logical extremes, but you have to hedge the results with common sense because when you take things to their extremes a small error in reasoning could lead you far astray. |
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> I think it's interesting to take propositions to their logical extremes
What I find most annoying about animal rights activists is that they mean well, but most of them haven't really thought through their position, and pushing their positions to logical extremes is a great way of exposing it. People actually value human life above other life, and those that claim otherwise are either liars, psychopaths, or they just haven't thought it through.
I mean, if you make a classical trolley problem where you have to choose between saving 1 human baby or N puppies, is there a number, N, such that you would save the puppies instead of the baby? The logical consequence of "all life is equal" is that N=2. That's clearly murderous. If you were to make lifespan a factor, and dogs live 1/7th of a human, then N=8. That's still highly objectionable.
I honestly don't know if there's a number where I would start choosing the puppies.. 1 million? Puppycide or one human? Or is that example too extreme? I don't know, but it's interesting to think about.