[wpietri]

I'm very uncomfortable with this line of argument:

> However there are urban restructuring projects every day in western countries that displace more people without proper compensation than this incident.

I suspect it's factually untrue, but I'm more concerned with the moral implication that if we can find a wrong Y that is worse than wrong X, we shouldn't care about X.

There is a legitimate version of the argument, one where we triage resource usage. But our ability to recognize and acknowledge wrongs is not a limited resource. Indeed, this style of argument expends far more energy in denying the recognition of wrongs that it would take to say, "Why yes, that is wrong."

[pdpi]

> but I'm more concerned with the moral implication that if we can find a wrong Y that is worse than wrong X, we shouldn't care about X.

Definitely not "shouldn't care". But you should ask yourself "if there's a ton of materially similar things I'm ok with, why should I feel outraged about this one in particular?"

Sometimes the answer is that you shouldn't feel outraged at all, other times the answer will be that you should be outraged at all similar things. It's only rarely that the outrage should be focused on the one particular incident.

[JoeAltmaier]

Utilitarian arguments lead you strange places. You can end up eating children or burning hobos for fuel. Be very careful.

[roarkjs]

All arguments can lean you strange places. They're inconsequential if they don't.

Luckily, the modern pragmatist is also socially aware.

[pc2g4d]

You seem to be judging the worth of an argument by the "strangeness" of its implications. That's a curious standard.

[voteforchange]

I think we would all agree that persuasiveness is an axis upon which to judge arguments. "Strangeness" is far out there on the persuasive axis.

Maybe so far out there that Richard Dawkins and Neil Degrasse Tyson are arguing in the other room... but its on the axis somewhere.

[shawn-furyan]

Disclaimer: read the note at the end.

> But our ability to recognize and acknowledge wrongs is not a limited resource.

I just happen to be re-reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow at the moment, so this is very fresh on my mind. In fact, this does seem to be a limited resource, and the bias that overwhelming the resource creates is called the availability bias. Essentially, in cases where the media covers matters of lesser significance while ignoring matters of greater significance predictably leads people to weight the more heavily covered issue more highly despite its relative unimportance.

I don't know about the specific claim by the gp, but in general, I think it's socially useful to point out situations where a less covered related issue is not getting the appropriate amount of attention relative to a particular sensationalized issue in question.

Note: I'm interpreting 'recognize and acknowledge wrongs' as our ability to concert attention and restorative actions toward addressing issues, because this is where the rubber meets the road in addressing wrongs. So I'm responding more to a projection of wpietri's comment that I think is a bit more toward the consequential rather than a strict reading of her/his comment. This is clearly responding to a somewhat different argument than the one wpietri is making, so it shouldn't be construed as an argument against her/his statement so much as an argument inspired by her/his statement.

[wpietri]

Thanks for the clarity. By saying "recognize and acknowledge wrongs" I am specifically excluding action, so yes, you're talking about something else.