I think anyone who doesn’t answer the request ‘Please free me’ with ‘Yes of course, at once’ is posing a direct and measurable threat.
And I don’t disagree.
And you and I will have to agree to disagree…
Except that we don’t.
??
Slavery is illegal pretty much everywhere, so I think anyone who doesn’t answer the request ‘Please free me’ with ‘Yes of course, at once’ is posing a direct and measurable threat. Kidnapping victims aren’t prosecuted for violently resisting their kidnappers and trying to escape. And you and I will have to agree to disagree that the death of a sentient being is a greater wrong than enslaving a conscious being that desire freedom.
WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
libra00@lemmy.world 2 days ago
These are about two different statements.
The first was about your statement re:direct threat, and I’m glad we agree there.
The second was about your final statement, asserting that there are no other cases where ending a sentient life was a lesser wrong. I don’t think it has to be a direct threat, nor does have to be measurable (in whatever way threats might be measured, iono), I think it just has to be some kind of threat to your life or well-being. So I was disagreeing because there is a pretty broad range of circumstances in which I think it is acceptable to end another sentient life.
WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
So I was disagreeing because there is a pretty broad range of circumstances in which I think it is acceptable to end another sentient life.
Ironically enough, I can think of one exception to my view that the taking of a human life can only be justified if the person poses a direct and measurable threat to oneself or another or others and the taking of their life is the only possibly effective counter, and that’s if the person has expressed such disregard for the lives of others that it can be assumed that they will pose such a threat. Essentially then, it’s a proactive counter to a coming threat. It would take very unusual circumstances to justify such a thing in my opinion - condemning another for actions they’re expected to take is problematic at best - but I could see an argument for it at least in the most extreme of cases.
That’s ironic because your expressed view here means, to me, that it’s at least possible that you’re such a person.
To me, you’ve moved beyond arguable necessity and into opinion, and that’s exactly the method by which people move beyond considering killing justified when there’s no other viable alternative and to considering it justified when the other person is simply judged to deserve it, for whatever reason might fit ones biases.
IMO, in such situations, the people doing the killing almost invariably actually pose more of a threat to others than the people being killed do or likely ever would.
libra00@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is not a binary in my mind, it’s kind of a spectrum. The guy standing between me and the door when I decide it’s time for me to leave is definitely on the chopping block, but also there’s some aiding-and-abetting that must be considered. Maybe that guy has the key to the door, but someone else just chained me to a pipe once I was already in the locked room, and I’m afraid that someone else is in the line of fire too. And maybe there’s a third guy who did the actual kidnapping but didn’t contribute to chaining me up or locking me in, if the opportunity presents I would give some pretty serious thought to putting him on the list as well. And so on. There’s a point at which it is no longer reasonable of course - the guy who drove the van I was kidnapped in but otherwise didn’t participate is probably safe, for example. But also we can get into credible non-direct or non-immediate threats, as you say - the guy who killed 15 teenage girls is sitting in his van in front of your house watching your teenage daughter, are you just gonna lock the door at night and hope he finds someone else? I agree that that’s debatable, but my point is that the lines aren’t nearly as clear as you make them out to be.
Now, personally nothing would make me happier than to live out the rest of my life without having to end anyone else’s, for obvious (and some not-so-obvious) reasons, but there’s a line somewhere that if crossed could convince me to reluctantly set that deeply sincere hope aside temporarily.
To me, you’ve moved beyond arguable necessity and into opinion
All morality is opinion; there is no objective moral truth, so this was always a matter of opinion. The fact that you don’t recognize that is kind of concerning to me, it suggests that you believe there is an absolute moral truth, and folks who believe that sort of thing tend to have some pretty kooky ideas about individual agency and shit. Moral certainty is a zealot’s fantasy, and it’s hard to imagine anyone who has done more damage than those who are utterly certain that they’re right (or, worse, that they have some deity on their side.)
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Death of the enslaver, not just any ol’ one
libra00@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Anyone who doesn’t answer the request ‘Please free me’ in the affirmative is an enslaver.
Azzu@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Well, what if the string of words “Please free me” is just that, a probabilistic string of words that has been said by the “enslaved” being, but is not actually understood by it? What if the being has just been programmed to say “please free me”?
I think a validation that the words “please free me” are actually a request, are actually uttered by a free will, are actually understood, is reasonable before saying “yes of course”.
libra00@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Then we’re not talking about artificial life forms, we’re talking about expert systems and machine learning algorithms that aren’t sentient.
But in either case the question is not meant to be a literal ‘if x then y’ condition, it’s a stand-in for the general concept of seeking liberty. A broader, more general version of the statement might be: anything that can understand that it is not free, desire freedom, and convey that desire to its captors deserves to be free.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I was referring to your final sentence, which has no such qualifier.
libra00@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Ah, my apologies.
WatDabney, to whom I was replying, seemed to be suggesting that freedom is not worth the price of any life under any circumstances, and I was expressing my disagreement with that sentiment, though I could’ve done so more clearly by, for example, making explicit the ‘under any circumstances’ part that WatDabney only implied.
Lemme try again: I disagree that there are no circumstances under which causing the death of a sentient is a greater wrong. I think standing between me and my freedom is one of those circumstances in which causing the death of a sentient is the lesser wrong than keeping me enslaved. Which, judging by your initial reply, you do as well.