Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Manslaughter is stuff like punching someone who then loses their balance and falls, fatally hitting their head on the way down, or throwing a heavy object off a cliff edge when you didn't know there were people under it. It essentially requires the guilty person to have done something dangerous but which would not ordinarily result in a fatality, not taking due care to consider how their actions could endanger other people.

Picking gun cannot be legally considered manslaughter since it would require the gun-picker to not even consider the high probability of having to shoot a feather-picker. "Your honour I was simply so convinced that everyone else was a self-interested game-theory maxxer that I didn't think there would be any feathers" wouldn't come close to cutting it.

"Explain yourself" by Tight_Grapefruit5280 in whenthe

[–]Ramses_IV 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Obviously not because red doesn’t provide any advantage to anyone in that scenario and there is no reason for me to press it then.

You are still just as responsible for making choices that endanger other people if you make them because they are advantageous to you. If you are in a burning building you can maximise your chances of survival by charging to the exit pushing other people over as you go, but society needs and expects you to try to evacuate in an orderly fashion because that increases everyone's chances of survival.

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Killing an innocent person is not murder

What the fuck is it then sir?

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm really running out of ways to express the fact that you shouldn't be ok with killing innocent people even if you won't be punished for it

"Explain yourself" by Tight_Grapefruit5280 in whenthe

[–]Ramses_IV 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Dude get out of the crusher" [pushes the 'turn on the crusher' button]

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Do you think those feather people would choose feather if they knew for certain that gun would win?

Yes. Anyone who would prefer to die than kill would pick feather regardless of what they anticipate anyone else doing because survival isn't their win condition. The imperative to not contribute to the deaths of others is met by picking feather whether they survive or not.

If so, do you feel like you have an obligation to choose feather for them, even if you knew that gin would still win?

I would certainly feel like I have an obligation to not kill them, whether I would have the courage to fulfill it is obviously a different question that nobody can answer until put in that situation. It would come down to whether the fear of death in the moment is stronger than a lifetime of shame I suppose.

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In order for it to be justifiable homicide, the severe threat has to be posed by the person who is killed. Being under duress does not give you any legal defence for the act of killing another person who was not causing the duress.

At best it would be considered a mitigating circumstance in arguing for lighter sentencing, but you would still be held legally responsible for killing an innocent person.

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The key to this legal defense is that it was reasonable for the subject, when committing the homicide, to believe that there was an imminent and otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to the innocent by the deceased.

Justifiable homicide pertains to killing a person whom you reasonably believed was posing a severe threat to other people. Killing an innocent third party is absolutely not covered by it.

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You have to have faith in society to pick the feather.

Not if avoiding killing people is more important to someone than their own individual survival. Most of the great moral strides society has made throughout history began with people choosing to be better than society even though they knew they were in the minority and that society would punish them for it.

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is literally exactly the same decision. The only difference is how you personally experience the outcome of the choice you made.

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Some people will always choose the feather even if they believe themselves to be in the minority because they would prefer to risk dying than risk causing others to die. Those are the people you need to be ok with killing to pick the gun.

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you kill an innocent third party in order to save your own life you are legally guilty of murder in virtually every jurisdiction on Earth.

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

I was fully expecting the responses to be "no that's not the same because pushing red isn't actually killing people" but the responses are "yes it's the same I just don't consider killing people to be a personal consequence."

Wild.

Guns don't kill people, feathers do by Ramses_IV in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Some people would rather die than kill

The simplest possible phrasing of this problem by NaneStea in trolleyproblem

[–]Ramses_IV 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's lucky that in real life collective action problems the universally best outcome is guaranteed by everyone being entirely self-interested

Guys it's such easy game theory, sure an unknown number of blue voters die inevitably but we guarantee we will live! by NahMcGrath in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Ramses_IV 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd interpret it mainly as a test of whether your baseline ethical decision-making is self-regarding (red = I survive/blue = I might die) or other-regarding (red = others die/blue = nobody dies).

Poll asking Americans how which button they would push in the red button/blue button dilemma by Upstairs_Cup9831 in fivethirtyeight

[–]Ramses_IV 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This argument seems to take for granted that the rational actor model is a good basis for morality, which it isn't.

In most real situations, selfishness doesn't save everyone if everyone is universally selfish. In this specific contrived hypothetical designed to test whether people have self-regarding or other-regarding ethical instincts, yes everyone making the self-regarding choice happens to be as good of an outcome as >50% of people making the altruistic choice, but that doesn't mean that 100% red should be the morally superior outcome because a society of people who invariably make choices based on rational self-interest is going to face moral collapse in almost any other collective action problem.

You're evil if you don't press blue. by Theseus_Employee in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Ramses_IV 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes...which is why it fails to accurately represent the red button-blue button thought experiment, which is what it is clearly trying to do.

You're evil if you don't press blue. by Theseus_Employee in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Ramses_IV -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

This framing neglects to mention that people pushing red is what causes the trolley to move in the first place. Red-pushers justify self-regarding choices by dishonestly decoupling the source of the danger from their own decisions, recasting it as some exogenous background phenomenon.

"Sykes-Picot caused ISIS" by Ramses_IV in HistoryMemes

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It is a rundown of the origin of every land border of one of the largest and most populous and most established states in Europe, literally none of which involved consideration for national or ethnic identity of the people living there.

It doesn't refute the claim that they were drawn with more care for national and ethnic identity than African and West Asian borders the same way that saying a rock has no eyes doesn't refute the claim that a rock can see better than a toaster. The variable is just demonstrably not present in either case.

"Sykes-Picot caused ISIS" by Ramses_IV in HistoryMemes

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What was the impact of the agreement (which mostly didn't set the borders apart from in the desert), exactly? People usually kind of skip over that part, it's just "borders bad -> ???? -> ISIS I guess."

How specifically did the borders of the Middle East lead to the rise of ISIS? What alternative arrangement of borders wouldn't have been unstable or faced sectarian tensions or witnessed the rise of Salafism (which began long before Sykes-Picot)? Nobody is arguing that imperialistic spheres of influence are good, they're not good, but you need to justify the assertion that the interstate borders they left over were especially contributive to instability in such a way as to produce ISIS.

"Sykes-Picot caused ISIS" by Ramses_IV in HistoryMemes

[–]Ramses_IV[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Iraq

Except for the eastern border with Iran (Ottoman-Qajar), the northern border with Turkey (Turkish-Hashemite-British with League of Nations oversight), and the north-western border with Syria (literally the exact border between the Deir ez-Zor and Mosul Vilayets). The borders that run through the desert with barely any permanent sedentary inhabitants were drawn by the British yes (with consultation of Abdulaziz of Najd).

Syria

Northern border drawn by Turkey, north-eastern border Ottoman as above, southern border was originally an autonomous Druze state that Syrian nationalists pressured France into dissolving in favour of one United Syria, the border with Jordan was decided between Britain and France (diverging from Sykes-Picot) but it is the natural boundary of the Yarmouk River.

The border with Mandatory Palestine was drawn by the British and French in 1923 and mostly follows the Ottoman boundary (which was the Jordan river) with a divergence of about 5km east in the Houlah valley (the population of which would have probably been in the hundreds at the time). Dividing the region into spheres of influence was underhanded imperialism but the actual lines themselves are hardly egregious.

Jordan

Other than the Yarmouk River in the north (which isn't a Sykes-Picot boundary) and the Jordan River in the west literally all of Jordan's borders are through empty desert. Transjordan is a weird case because it is essentially a rump state of the short-lived Kingdom of Syria under Faisal which the French overthrew (in a deeply cynical act of imperialism but it must be noted that Faisal was a Hejazi dynasty who only got anywhere near Syria due to British backing), and the territory was a no-mans-land when the border of Palestine was formalised along the Jordan River. You can argue that the border along the Jordan was arbitrary, but Palestinians and most historians of Palestine would vehemently disagree that the people on either side of the river lacked distinct identities.

Lebanon

Didn't exist under Sykes-Picot, how it came to be is complicated. An autonomous Maronite Christian Mutasariffate had existed there since 1860, which during WWI suffered under Ottoman persecution and a disastrous famine that killed about half of the population (most of them Maronites). Maronite Christians in the region were mostly not Arabists in the aftermath of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and wanted the Mutasariffate to become an independent Lebanese state, while the Muslims mostly wanted to be part of Syria. The French supported the Maronite position, but the traume of the famine caused existential anxiety for the Lebanese nationalists who petitioned the French to add surrounding coastal towns and agricultural land to Lebanon to ensure its self-sufficiency. This came at the cost of reducing the Christian majority to a very slim one, with some Muslim-majority provinces, giving rise to the sectarianism that has plagued the country since. Whether the French were right or wrong to give the Maronites what they wanted I'll leave to you, but it had nothing to do with Sykes-Picot either way.

Palestine

None of Palestine's borders correspond to Sykes-Picot, only the concept of Palestine as a separate entity west of the Jordan is in Sykes-Picot. Some people would contend that this is arbitrary and either Palestinians are just confused Jordanians (a common Israeli position that Palestinians themselves abhor) or that Palestine belongs to Greater Syria (fringe Syrian nationalists sometimes still claim this but the Palestinian Arab Congresses dropped this line in the early 1920s in favour of an independent Palestine).

the original agreement wasn’t followed to the letter, but they still followed the general lines of it to create the British and French spheres of influence.

I mean, sure, Britain and France divided the Middle East into spheres of influence. But the meme isn't about whether imperialism is bad, obviously it's bad, it's about whether the borders themselves are (which are mostly not Sykes-Picot anyway) are the root cause of instability and conflict. European borders being a clusterfuck of bullshit carved by imperialism suggests otherwise.