this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
811 points (80.0% liked)

Political Memes

5606 readers
1362 users here now

Welcome to politcal memes!

These are our rules:

Be civilJokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.

No misinformationDon’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.

Posts should be memesRandom pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.

No bots, spam or self-promotionFollow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

i can't even guess as to why they went quiet. not one guess at all. we will never know.

edit: well they're not quiet now once they get called out

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

If I have a choice between bad and worse, I’m taking bad, what kind of lunatic would intentionally choose worse?

The vast majority of people would choose worse, at least in some situations.

Philosopher Bernard Williams proposed this thought experiment: suppose someone has rounded up a group of 20 innocent people, and says that he will kill all of them, unless you agree to kill one, in which case he'll let the rest go. Act Utilitarianism would suggest that it is not only morally permissible, but morally obligatory to comply, which Williams saw as absurd. As an addendum, suppose the person then orders you to round up another 20 people so he can repeat the experiment with someone else, and if you don't, he'll have his men kill 40 instead. Congratulations, your "lesser-evilist" ideology now has you working for a psychopath and recruiting more people to work for him too.

Even the trolley problem, which liberals love to trot out to justify their positions, is not nearly as clear cut as they try to pretend it is. A follow up to the trolley problem is, is it ethical to kill an innocent person in order to harvest their organs in order to give five people lifesaving transplants? The overwhelming majority of people say no.

Act Utilitarianism is something that seems intuitive at first glance, but is very difficult to actually defend under scrutiny, and there are many, many alternative moral frameworks that reject its assumptions and conclusions. Liberals don't seem to realize that this framework they treat as absolute and objective - that you would have to be a "lunatic" to reject - is actually a specific ideology, and one that's not particularly popular or robust.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The trolley problem is clearly not clear cut at all, that's what makes it interesting. This, of course, is lost on the Dunning-Kruger crowd.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Contrived explanations couched in self indulgent and imperious insults, just like the Biden/Harris campaign. And you lot wonder why so many voters didnt bother to get off the couch.

You've learned less than nothing and are even worse now than before. I see a lot of calls to move the party rightward, cloaked in a very vague rejection of "wokeness". And you expect to win any election like this? Out-republicanning the republicans has been tried so many times by the liberals and its never worked. And yet you lot keep running the same play every time.

I guess I should be happy you make the case for a progressive party easier, but damn, its disappointing that we even need to do it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I think you're replying to the wrong comment.