Don’t learn too much from fiction (including games with non-real-world rules).
There are no actual sentient beings harmed by the actions in A&A. There is no moral impact from where you choose to use your plastic pieces.
In real life, some violence is likely justified to prevent worse outcomes. Whether any given war meets that standard, and what actions within a war are overall beneficial, are at best “difficult to determine”.
Also fighting in other wars. (I’m under the impression that this was maybe more the case in the past than it is today, but I’m not super confident in that.)
The confusion here is in the word “cost”. In the context of lsusr’s post, costs and cheapness are framed in terms of monetary costs and cheapness, yet I ask: why not consider moral costs as real, decision-critical costs? Then seek to reduce all decision-critical costs, whether moral, instrumental, or otherwise.
Then you run into the big problem of how to measure moral cost. There will be situations where you can minimise monetary cost by increasing the moral cost. To minimise for both you need to put a price tag on morality in dollars. How much does a dead civilian cost?
You know what else is depraved? Kissing. You’re literally putting orifices against orifices. Also homosexuality is depraved. But thank god cost-benefit analysis wins out sometimes over “waah waah, depravity”.
Anyways I’m confused by your initial reaction. I’ll pretend you said something other than depravity; I’ll pretend you mentioned some kind of actual real problem, like non-[meta-wanted] unwanted suffering.
Just measure the suffering and do the calculation.
I understand one’s uncertainty about how much (non-[meta-wanted] unwanted) suffering a human life is worth, as well as one’s uncertainty about how much money is worth how much suffering.
But the global facts of your conditional perferences don’t go away just because the local facts (a subspace of all possible situational facts) you have to deal aren’t the facts of the conditions of those preferences. Not thinking about the questions doesn’t make them go away.
This is why I value ideal speech situations. I can’t pretend to have solve ethics by myself. Someone will have good, hard questions for whatever my theory is. And I don’t trust (at this time)* Committees For Solving Ethics to give due reverence to ideal speech situations, nor [good, hard] questions.
*(I may be surprised.)
Endorsed counterperspective: suffering-upon-learning-about can turn out to be a good heuristic for structural issues related to suffering. It might also be inherently meaningful, but hopefully there is something deeper than just culture underneath the unhappiness-upon-learning-about, otherwise there are some bullets to bite about so-called social progress, which I find too implausible.
Nature does not create ideal situations for doing things that do not harm others; that’s the problem. Then humans rationalize the cruelty of nature.
Don’t learn too much from fiction (including games with non-real-world rules).
There are no actual sentient beings harmed by the actions in A&A. There is no moral impact from where you choose to use your plastic pieces.
In real life, some violence is likely justified to prevent worse outcomes. Whether any given war meets that standard, and what actions within a war are overall beneficial, are at best “difficult to determine”.
Games with non-real-world rules are how everyone who fights wars prepares for wars.
Also fighting in other wars. (I’m under the impression that this was maybe more the case in the past than it is today, but I’m not super confident in that.)
The confusion here is in the word “cost”. In the context of lsusr’s post, costs and cheapness are framed in terms of monetary costs and cheapness, yet I ask: why not consider moral costs as real, decision-critical costs? Then seek to reduce all decision-critical costs, whether moral, instrumental, or otherwise.
Then you run into the big problem of how to measure moral cost. There will be situations where you can minimise monetary cost by increasing the moral cost. To minimise for both you need to put a price tag on morality in dollars. How much does a dead civilian cost?
Because money is bounded, but depravity is not.
You know what else is depraved? Kissing. You’re literally putting orifices against orifices. Also homosexuality is depraved. But thank god cost-benefit analysis wins out sometimes over “waah waah, depravity”.
You said that, not me.
Depravity is not a real problem.
Anyways I’m confused by your initial reaction. I’ll pretend you said something other than depravity; I’ll pretend you mentioned some kind of actual real problem, like non-[meta-wanted] unwanted suffering.
Just measure the suffering and do the calculation.
I understand one’s uncertainty about how much (non-[meta-wanted] unwanted) suffering a human life is worth, as well as one’s uncertainty about how much money is worth how much suffering.
But the global facts of your conditional perferences don’t go away just because the local facts (a subspace of all possible situational facts) you have to deal aren’t the facts of the conditions of those preferences. Not thinking about the questions doesn’t make them go away.
This is why I value ideal speech situations. I can’t pretend to have solve ethics by myself. Someone will have good, hard questions for whatever my theory is. And I don’t trust (at this time)* Committees For Solving Ethics to give due reverence to ideal speech situations, nor [good, hard] questions.
*(I may be surprised.)
Endorsed counterperspective: suffering-upon-learning-about can turn out to be a good heuristic for structural issues related to suffering. It might also be inherently meaningful, but hopefully there is something deeper than just culture underneath the unhappiness-upon-learning-about, otherwise there are some bullets to bite about so-called social progress, which I find too implausible.
Nature does not create ideal situations for doing things that do not harm others; that’s the problem. Then humans rationalize the cruelty of nature.