• So you would sooner choose to let more people suffer than involve yourself in seeing fewer people suffer. What an awful person you are.

        • Yeah you are. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You don’t get to not involve yourself, not pulling the lever is as much an active choice to kill 5 people as pulling the lever is a choice to kill one.

          You value your own sense of self righteousness over the lives of other people, and that’s awful and selfish.

          • @commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            11 year ago

            not pulling the lever is as much an active choice to kill 5 people as pulling the lever is a choice to kill one.

            that’s not what deontologists believe

            • I don’t care what deontologists believe. They value their own sense of self-righteousness and moral superiority over the lives of other people, and that’s evil. If you would rather see a woman raped than commit an act of violence against her rapist because committing violence is always wrong, you are evil. If you accept that there are situations where committing acts of violence aren’t necessarily wrong, you aren’t a deontologist and don’t get to use it as an excuse not to pull the lever.

                • Then you’re not a deontologist. It’s definitional. Actions have inherent moral value, regardless of the situation. If something is ever not permissible, then it’s always not permissible. That’s what deontologists believe, isn’t it? If not, then you’re still taking a consequentialist stance on morality, but with extra steps that allow you to claim that your own inaction is actually the right thing to do, but only when you decided not to take action.

                  If you don’t think violence is always wrong, then what’s your excuse for not pulling the lever, or voting for the person who would cause less suffering? To my eyes, those are situations where the “violence” I’m commiting is permissible because it leads to less suffering than inaction would.

                  • @commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    01 year ago

                    then what’s your excuse for not pulling the lever

                    the categorical imperative. if I were tied to the track I would not want someone to send a trolley hurtling at me when they have the choice not to do that.

          • @commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            01 year ago

            You value your own sense of self righteousness over the lives of other people, and that’s awful and selfish.

            and I’d say you value your own sense of power over the lives of the person you killed.

            • That’s totally incorrect. I value the lives of the people that aren’t going to die. Unlike you, I don’t make decisions based on how I personally feel about them, but rather what the outcome will be.