[epgui]

Anything can be justified by extraordinary circumstances. Even cannibalism. You're on a small boat with 10 people, and everyone will die if you don't eat the weakest. If you eat the weakest, 9 out of 10 people survive. Your move.

[darth_avocado]

Yes. But this situation is more like you’re on a boat with 10 people and everyone will die if you don’t get food. But there’s a bigger boat next to you who will give you food if you dive in the water and get pearls for them, which you do. But the bigger boat only gives you food for 3 people. So you still keep diving and getting the pearls while starving. But the big boat now says they’d only give you food for 2 in return because that’s how the market works. And the people on the big boat keep justifying this behavior because without their food the people on the smaller boat would die, so that’s better than nothing.

[matwood]

In this already strained analogy is it really correct? Would it be better to say the bigger boat is giving them enough food for 20 people, but 2 people on the boat are hoarding it and forcing the other 8 keep diving for scraps? So for the bigger boat to fix this situation, they need to go in and take out the 2 people hoarding and then run the smaller boat to make sure it doesn't happen again.

[epgui]

Of course with every piece of information you add to the scenario, the calculus may change.

I'm with you there, but the example you gave is very different from the ultra-simplistic example I gave.

[beebeepka]

Their example maps to reality (at least the current topic) much better, though

[epgui]

Perhaps, but the point I was trying to make was very limited in scope, and on a different level of abstraction. All I needed to argue was that extraordinary circumstances can affect the moral calculus in general, and not that it did so in any particular contemporary real-life example.

[beebeepka]

I agree

[ifdefdebug]

I throw you out of the boat. Your move.