Very weakly. Strongly to those who quote-mine so badly they can’t finish the sentence, yes. There’s nothing I can do about them.
I was primarily concerned with the much stronger case at hand—if I were to entertain specific immoral ideas, rather than talking about some of my reasons for not talking about them in general.
the much stronger case at hand—if I were to entertain specific immoral ideas
You did :-) Let me quote you (emphasis mine):
“All of the munchkin ideas I can think of aren’t so much unlikely to work as hideously unethical”
Basically you already confessed that hideously unethical ideas came into your mind and they were in sufficiently specific form for you to recognize their unethicalness. The fact that you didn’t publish them on the ’net is secondary.
Note that this is not a call to raise a torches-and-pitchforks mob, but rather a reminder that you can’t think about something without thinking about it :-)
Having an idea is rather different from entertaining it, at least as I (and perhaps Luke as well) understand the connotations. I can certainly conceive of all manner of monstrous plans, but I do not share them because after assessing their morality, I decline to pursue them further. I do not look into how to implement them, because I do not want to implement them.
I suspect that Luke had a similar thought, acknowledging that while he may be able to think about a baby-powered reactor, for example, he does not want to draw up the plans for it, either for actual use or for the purpose of discussion here.
Very weakly. Strongly to those who quote-mine so badly they can’t finish the sentence, yes. There’s nothing I can do about them.
I was primarily concerned with the much stronger case at hand—if I were to entertain specific immoral ideas, rather than talking about some of my reasons for not talking about them in general.
You did :-) Let me quote you (emphasis mine):
“All of the munchkin ideas I can think of aren’t so much unlikely to work as hideously unethical”
Basically you already confessed that hideously unethical ideas came into your mind and they were in sufficiently specific form for you to recognize their unethicalness. The fact that you didn’t publish them on the ’net is secondary.
Note that this is not a call to raise a torches-and-pitchforks mob, but rather a reminder that you can’t think about something without thinking about it :-)
Having an idea is rather different from entertaining it, at least as I (and perhaps Luke as well) understand the connotations. I can certainly conceive of all manner of monstrous plans, but I do not share them because after assessing their morality, I decline to pursue them further. I do not look into how to implement them, because I do not want to implement them.
I suspect that Luke had a similar thought, acknowledging that while he may be able to think about a baby-powered reactor, for example, he does not want to draw up the plans for it, either for actual use or for the purpose of discussion here.
Yes.