I’m guessing you think the problem with mass murder is the effect on society of knowing that crazy people might kill you for doing things they don’t like, so that murder tends to be not simply a removal of human life, but a political act, a lynching.
Do you consider murdering a thousand people you don’t like to be better or worse than letting ten thousand randomly-selected people die because you can’t be arsed to do anything about it?
I’m guessing you think the problem with mass murder is the effect on society of knowing that crazy people might kill you for doing things they don’t like
Is that the only alternative to “The problem with mass murder is its effect on human population size” that you can think of? I always thought that the problem with mass murder was about the same as the problem with normal murder except multipled by a thousand or eleven million or however many victims there are.
I always thought that the problem with mass murder was about the same as the problem with normal murder except multipled by a thousand or eleven million or however many victims there are.
For a strict utilitarian, the main problem with non-torture murder can be seen as the fear it produces in the population.
Strict utilitarianism is quite common here, so guessing that wedrifid is one isn’t that much of a reach.
I don’t think “strict utilitarianism” refers to a specific, well-defined moral system, but my point still stands if you’re referring to the general class of moral systems and methods of moral reasoning that are popular here; involuntary death is bad, whether torturous or not, so killing ten million people is at least as bad as the sum of the individual badness of killing each of them. The “at least” part is to take into account any further negative effects of mass murder, such as the one that you mentioned, but compared to millions of people dying involuntarily, I really doubt that’s the dominating factor.
Well, I for one didn’t look at if from a deontological point of view. Unlike other victims of coercion, murdered people tend not to make much of a fuss about having been forced to die. However, their death tends to produce sorrow and anger on those emotionally and economically reliant on them (including their creditors, superiors, subordinates, clients) and causes the loss of a hub of social network and a repository of knowledge and skill accumulated over a lifetime. In other words, murder, for a stable, sedentary, densely structured society, is extremely wasteful and troublesome. And it leads to a shitton of paperwork. That’s for just one death.
However, from a Golden Rule/Reciprocal Altruism POV, committing murder is an extremely bad idea because, besides the aforementioned problems with each individual murder, the fact that people can get killed, for whatever reason, may make one fear for one’s safety among fellow humans ,raising stress levels to presumably unbearable heights and cause a limitless waste in resources in personal security, . Think of Israel-Palestine, where people constantly live in fear of being killed by some crazy suicide bomber or some trigger-happy teenage soldier. Despite what the actual risk of that happening might be compared to the risk of dying in a traffic accident, much more money ends up being spent on this sort of thing than on road safety. Car accidents, as the Joker would put it, are “all part of the plan”. I love how effectively that character uses The Dark Side and The Fallacy Of Grey. Does anyone know any examples of similarly eloquent villains? (Besides Nietzsche that is).
Hence why we are taught to heavily frown upon it.
A Mongol from Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde might see things differently, is all I’m saying. There are also countries like Colombia where murder is extremely common, and often absolutely senseless. Society functions, people get used to the fear. Humans can get used to a lot.
Deliberately murdering a mass of people causes the same effect
Do you consider murdering a thousand people you don’t like to be better or worse than letting ten thousand randomly-selected people die because you can’t be arsed to do anything about it?
I should not answer that question. But will(1). ;)
The murdering of 1,000 people is far better. Especially if done one at a time in novel and humiliating ways. That will serve to lower the status of the group with negative value and so alter the behaviour of the rest of the population. Of course this requires ‘liking’ to be closely related to the consequentialist value of people whose identities fit that archetype.
That said I still wouldn’t murder people. Partly due to an irrational sense of morality and partly due to an ethical injunction.
(1) This message will self destruct upon the first disingenuous quotation by a future social aggressor. Unless this pre-emptive expression of contempt for said moraliser is sufficient for me to be satisfied with leaving the results.
I don’t think that would make sense unless you could somehow accomplish it, not only without people knowing you were responsible for the murders, but that the deaths were murders at all. Otherwise rather than lowering the status of the group, you would probably make the public view them as noble victims.
I don’t think that would make sense unless you could somehow accomplish it, not only without people knowing you were responsible for the murders, but that the deaths were murders at all. Otherwise rather than lowering the status of the group, you would probably make the public view them as noble victims.
Here we disagree on a matter of fact and expectation. Historically in cases where specific groups were the target of lynchings the resulting lowering of group status has been rapid. Even members of said groups lower their perceptions of their own status such that they avoid sending high status signals (acting as equal to the persecutors) and so making themselves the next target.
The same phenomenon can be observed in workplaces and other tribes within our culture, with respect to acts of humiliation, not death. The others in the tribe may view them as noble victims but victims are pitied, not respected. People, particularly ambitious people, will avoid doing things that affiliate them with the victim class. Status goes into free-fall.
I did mention ‘one at a time’ and ‘in humiliating ways’ so as to minimise any potential martyrdom bonuses. Something terrible happening once is an exception, a tragedy. Something happening a thousand times is a norm, the status quoe. In a certain instinctive sense it becomes legitimate.
The presence of humilitation and even the fact that it is a murder, not a valiant death in battle is also important. If the victims are raped, castrated and stoned then they just don’t look as cool as if they charge into battle screaming “you may take my life but you will never take my freedom!” People at times have even placed a lot of stock in whether they are killed by the sword or by hanging—and for good status relevant reason.
Here we disagree on a matter of fact and expectation. Historically in cases where specific groups were the target of lynchings the resulting lowering of group status has been rapid. Even members of said groups lower their perceptions of their own status such that they avoid sending high status signals (acting as equal to the persecutors) and so making themselves the next target.
Can you provide any examples? I can’t think of any cases where groups were targeted for lynchings where it’s clear that their status fell as a result rather than their low status causing the lynchings.
You do have two tendencies working at odds here; the just world fallacy could cause their status to decrease, but being victimized for one’s affiliation can also be a positive status symbol, hence why Christians will often frame themselves as being persecuted for beliefs in cases where it’s clearly not accurate. If you have someone clearly going around victimizing the group to an extreme extent with the purpose of humiliating them, I expect the martyrdom effect would win out.
Can you provide any examples? I can’t think of any cases where groups were targeted for lynchings where it’s clear that their status fell as a result rather than their low status causing the lynchings.
Given that the obvious examples are well known I suspect you would simply contradict them via a different chronological representation. I will note this, however: the motivation to lynch people exists for a reason. People do it because it works.
If you have someone clearly going around victimizing the group to an extreme extent with the purpose of humiliating them, I expect the martyrdom effect would win out.
I believe with considerable confidence that the reverse is true. Humiliating and victimizing a group will lower the status of that group.
Given that the obvious examples are well known I suspect you would simply contradict them via a different chronological representation. I will note this, however: the motivation to lynch people exists for a reason. People do it because it works.
I can think of plenty of cases of members of low status groups being lynched, but I can’t think of any examples that would appear to indicate that lynching resulted in a decrease of status, so I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about.
As for whether it works, it certainly works at killing or harming the victims, and if it didn’t do that, people wouldn’t bother doing it, but that doesn’t mean that it works at reducing status.
I haven’t seen them, but point taken. Am I right in assuming though, that they were deliberately built up as unsympathetic prior to being gruesomely killed? If you want to lower the group’s status, it’s that build up, where their characters are given a systematically negative portrayal, that you want to aim for, not the gruesome comeuppance.
Do you consider murdering a thousand people you don’t like to be better or worse than letting ten thousand randomly-selected people die because you can’t be arsed to do anything about it?
It ought to be better. None of the factors of either option (murder, don’t like, allow to die, randomly-selected, death due to apathy) are worth more than one human life. Thus, it is a simple question of scale. All the possible consequences—such as ‘now people will be afraid if I don’t like them’, ‘well, I can’t be held socially or legally responsible for their deaths’ - just do not outweigh 9,000 human lives.
That said, if I ever encountered this situation in real life, I would be immediately convinced that I had made a mistake in my reasoning, and would spend as much time as I possibly could looking for the alternative where nobody dies.
On the other hand, there’s the consolation that if and when you do cease to exist, you will no longer be bothered by fear of failure or anything else. You will have no regrets, no regrets at all.
I prefer to exist with regret and be bothered by the fear of failure than non-exist.
And besides, the universe isn’t me-centric. If I invented the cure to all human diseases, solved poverty and prevented the world from blowing up by nukes, I wouldn’t “die happy knowing what a positive impact I’ve had.” In the scope of things, there would be that person who’s me who did all that, and then ceased to exist.
I understand your fear. In fact, I have the same fear.
I don’t agree that the world would be better off without 50% of it. If anything, it’s underpopulated.
There’s a reason why only way of doing worse than doing nothing is to be causing mass murders.
I would be interested in hearing your reasoning for this position.
As such I precommit to upvoting an explanatory post, no matter how much I disagree with its content.
And I commit to at least leaving it neutral even if I disagree with its content. And I will disagree. :)
I posted it into discussion, because it’s a long explanation.
Probably unnecessarily long. Do tell.
I don’t even claim to try to be rational (I’m not), so I’m not the one to judge, but at least try to keep an open mind?
Of course, I’d appreciate your feedback even if you do disagree.
True. Also, depends on how massive.
The problem with mass murders is not the effect on population.
I’m guessing you think the problem with mass murder is the effect on society of knowing that crazy people might kill you for doing things they don’t like, so that murder tends to be not simply a removal of human life, but a political act, a lynching.
Do you consider murdering a thousand people you don’t like to be better or worse than letting ten thousand randomly-selected people die because you can’t be arsed to do anything about it?
Is that the only alternative to “The problem with mass murder is its effect on human population size” that you can think of? I always thought that the problem with mass murder was about the same as the problem with normal murder except multipled by a thousand or eleven million or however many victims there are.
Is that the only alternative that you can think of?
No, of course not. I just thought it was the most likely to be the one e had in mind.
For a strict utilitarian, the main problem with non-torture murder can be seen as the fear it produces in the population.
Strict utilitarianism is quite common here, so guessing that wedrifid is one isn’t that much of a reach.
I don’t think “strict utilitarianism” refers to a specific, well-defined moral system, but my point still stands if you’re referring to the general class of moral systems and methods of moral reasoning that are popular here; involuntary death is bad, whether torturous or not, so killing ten million people is at least as bad as the sum of the individual badness of killing each of them. The “at least” part is to take into account any further negative effects of mass murder, such as the one that you mentioned, but compared to millions of people dying involuntarily, I really doubt that’s the dominating factor.
Well, I for one didn’t look at if from a deontological point of view. Unlike other victims of coercion, murdered people tend not to make much of a fuss about having been forced to die. However, their death tends to produce sorrow and anger on those emotionally and economically reliant on them (including their creditors, superiors, subordinates, clients) and causes the loss of a hub of social network and a repository of knowledge and skill accumulated over a lifetime. In other words, murder, for a stable, sedentary, densely structured society, is extremely wasteful and troublesome. And it leads to a shitton of paperwork. That’s for just one death.
However, from a Golden Rule/Reciprocal Altruism POV, committing murder is an extremely bad idea because, besides the aforementioned problems with each individual murder, the fact that people can get killed, for whatever reason, may make one fear for one’s safety among fellow humans ,raising stress levels to presumably unbearable heights and cause a limitless waste in resources in personal security, . Think of Israel-Palestine, where people constantly live in fear of being killed by some crazy suicide bomber or some trigger-happy teenage soldier. Despite what the actual risk of that happening might be compared to the risk of dying in a traffic accident, much more money ends up being spent on this sort of thing than on road safety. Car accidents, as the Joker would put it, are “all part of the plan”. I love how effectively that character uses The Dark Side and The Fallacy Of Grey. Does anyone know any examples of similarly eloquent villains? (Besides Nietzsche that is).
Hence why we are taught to heavily frown upon it.
A Mongol from Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde might see things differently, is all I’m saying. There are also countries like Colombia where murder is extremely common, and often absolutely senseless. Society functions, people get used to the fear. Humans can get used to a lot.
Deliberately murdering a mass of people causes the same effect
I should not answer that question. But will(1). ;)
The murdering of 1,000 people is far better. Especially if done one at a time in novel and humiliating ways. That will serve to lower the status of the group with negative value and so alter the behaviour of the rest of the population. Of course this requires ‘liking’ to be closely related to the consequentialist value of people whose identities fit that archetype.
That said I still wouldn’t murder people. Partly due to an irrational sense of morality and partly due to an ethical injunction.
(1) This message will self destruct upon the first disingenuous quotation by a future social aggressor. Unless this pre-emptive expression of contempt for said moraliser is sufficient for me to be satisfied with leaving the results.
I don’t think that would make sense unless you could somehow accomplish it, not only without people knowing you were responsible for the murders, but that the deaths were murders at all. Otherwise rather than lowering the status of the group, you would probably make the public view them as noble victims.
Here we disagree on a matter of fact and expectation. Historically in cases where specific groups were the target of lynchings the resulting lowering of group status has been rapid. Even members of said groups lower their perceptions of their own status such that they avoid sending high status signals (acting as equal to the persecutors) and so making themselves the next target.
The same phenomenon can be observed in workplaces and other tribes within our culture, with respect to acts of humiliation, not death. The others in the tribe may view them as noble victims but victims are pitied, not respected. People, particularly ambitious people, will avoid doing things that affiliate them with the victim class. Status goes into free-fall.
I did mention ‘one at a time’ and ‘in humiliating ways’ so as to minimise any potential martyrdom bonuses. Something terrible happening once is an exception, a tragedy. Something happening a thousand times is a norm, the status quoe. In a certain instinctive sense it becomes legitimate.
The presence of humilitation and even the fact that it is a murder, not a valiant death in battle is also important. If the victims are raped, castrated and stoned then they just don’t look as cool as if they charge into battle screaming “you may take my life but you will never take my freedom!” People at times have even placed a lot of stock in whether they are killed by the sword or by hanging—and for good status relevant reason.
Can you provide any examples? I can’t think of any cases where groups were targeted for lynchings where it’s clear that their status fell as a result rather than their low status causing the lynchings.
You do have two tendencies working at odds here; the just world fallacy could cause their status to decrease, but being victimized for one’s affiliation can also be a positive status symbol, hence why Christians will often frame themselves as being persecuted for beliefs in cases where it’s clearly not accurate. If you have someone clearly going around victimizing the group to an extreme extent with the purpose of humiliating them, I expect the martyrdom effect would win out.
Given that the obvious examples are well known I suspect you would simply contradict them via a different chronological representation. I will note this, however: the motivation to lynch people exists for a reason. People do it because it works.
I believe with considerable confidence that the reverse is true. Humiliating and victimizing a group will lower the status of that group.
Being a victim is not cool.
I can think of plenty of cases of members of low status groups being lynched, but I can’t think of any examples that would appear to indicate that lynching resulted in a decrease of status, so I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about.
As for whether it works, it certainly works at killing or harming the victims, and if it didn’t do that, people wouldn’t bother doing it, but that doesn’t mean that it works at reducing status.
Fictional evidence, but the victims in the SAW movies weren’t seen as noble.
I haven’t seen them, but point taken. Am I right in assuming though, that they were deliberately built up as unsympathetic prior to being gruesomely killed? If you want to lower the group’s status, it’s that build up, where their characters are given a systematically negative portrayal, that you want to aim for, not the gruesome comeuppance.
Yes. The method of murder bore some (often ironic) link to flaws in the victim’s psyche or character.
It ought to be better. None of the factors of either option (murder, don’t like, allow to die, randomly-selected, death due to apathy) are worth more than one human life. Thus, it is a simple question of scale. All the possible consequences—such as ‘now people will be afraid if I don’t like them’, ‘well, I can’t be held socially or legally responsible for their deaths’ - just do not outweigh 9,000 human lives.
That said, if I ever encountered this situation in real life, I would be immediately convinced that I had made a mistake in my reasoning, and would spend as much time as I possibly could looking for the alternative where nobody dies.
On the other hand, there’s the consolation that if and when you do cease to exist, you will no longer be bothered by fear of failure or anything else. You will have no regrets, no regrets at all.
I prefer to exist with regret and be bothered by the fear of failure than non-exist.
And besides, the universe isn’t me-centric. If I invented the cure to all human diseases, solved poverty and prevented the world from blowing up by nukes, I wouldn’t “die happy knowing what a positive impact I’ve had.” In the scope of things, there would be that person who’s me who did all that, and then ceased to exist.