Comment on Philosophy has peaked. Checkmate atheists

• Windex007@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  The idea that you’re morally obligated to maximize your own health to minimize your burden on society usually doesn’t stand up well to follow up questions.

  Realistically, the societal health costs of being obese would be statistically higher than fucking roadkill. I think most people would find themselves pausing before suggesting to an obese person that thier obesity is more morally problematic than fucking roadkill.

  There is something to health of an individual in a society and morality, it’s pretty hard for me to ignore that intuition. I just don’t know a real formulation which doesn’t introduce more issues to a system of morality than it resolves? Curious if anyone had one.

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  • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    When I read liability, my instinct was contagion. There is absolutely a moral obligation to minimize contagion—we did a whole covid-lockdown thing about it.

    Being obese is too self-contained an issue, if it is an issue, I think. The only one suffering, if they are suffering, would be the obese person, and the only externalization of that would be financial costs that are too abstract for people to take personally.

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    • Windex007@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I have the great privilege of living in a society with socialized Healthcare, so these questions do come up from time to time.

      The lifetime Healthcare costs for people who have conditions which can be mitigated by lifestyle choices is a real thing. Smoking, being an obvious example much less touchy than obesity. Even if I’m extremely comfortable with the slice of my taxes that go to Healthcare… wouldn’t it be great if we got to spend less on smoking-related issues, and could instead buy more MRI machines. Merely pay for more doctors? Nurses? Expand the treatments we can even offer?

      Just because they’re abstract, doesn’t make it any less of a question of morality. I don’t see any moral difference between the contaigen and smoking from the perspective of the personal responsibility of maintaining the overall health of your society. One is just accepted by society.

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      • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        I don’t see any moral difference between the contaigen and smoking

        I don’t understand what you mean.

        Smoking isn’t contagious. Smoking might be socially contagious, but that’s a different kind. Smoking and the resulting cancer would be the kind of disease that people “choose” to take on, which is different from being accosted by influenza.

        You might be thinking about this on a societal level? I meant interpersonally. Showing up to an event while sick and without a mask is a little fucked up. And covid touches on the societal, but my chief moral complaint is really with people who were neglectful of the community effort to minimize harm during a pandemic, who would choose possibly killing somebody’s grandma so that they could go to the beach. I’m not really thinking about… taxes.

        Whether it is ethical for people to “overuse” the medical services their society provides I think depends ultimately on what it is fair to ask people to do, and what the actual consequences of not doing them are.

        Like, is it immoral to get a dildo stuck up your arse? Because you’re wasting a doctor’s time. I feel like we might be touching on such austere efficiencies that we’re beginning to lose sight of what a doctor is for.

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  • tias@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I think you’re strawmanning this. I didn’t say you are obligated to maximize your health. But that’s different from knowingly making yourself ill.

    In Sweden we spend a lot of resources treating people for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) which is almost exclusively the result of smoking. I think it’s wrong to smoke given how much it costs fellow tax payers and how it takes away resources from people who suffer from ailments that are not a result of their actions.

    That said, everyone deserves compassion and it’s also wrong not to help people who are suffering regardless of the reason. But that’s part of what makes it bad to knowingly hurt yourself - you’re imposing an obligation onto other people.

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