THE BOX

[rong]

So we all agree that we should kill bikes and I should have all of his money?

[eugmac]

So the moral of the story is, if anybody is richer than you you're allowed to kill him in the face and take his money, as long as you share with other poor people.

[rong]

And further still, as we're all in the top 10% based on individual wealth we should prob all get together in a commune and commit suicide on mass, bequeathing all of our wealth to some poor folk.

And then what? Carry on slicing off the top?

How far from the mean do we have to be to survive this genocide?

[eugmac]

Didn't we try this already with the USSR and so on? Wealth re-allocation didn't work out too well there.

[BennyLaRue]

So the moral of the story is, if anybody is richer than you you're allowed to kill him in the face and take his money, as long as you share with other poor people.

Good premise for a futuristic sci-fi movie.

[surviva316]

omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg MASSIVE post just got deleted by internet goblins.

[surviva316]

There haven't been very good Robin Hood analogies made in the last several posts, but let's just assume that we stick to the point where we kill someone who sucks at using their money for societal good and give it to people save lives:

Now I'm a stone-cold utilitarian and really struggle understanding any other perspective on ethics, so I'll just say that buying a 1 million dollar condo instead of using that money to save 10+ lives in Africa seems obviously like a non-optimal decision on the societal scale. I don't know how to explain how it's non-optimal, it just seems obvious to me. Whether or not you can term this as "killing" 10+ people is just getting caught up in rhetoric, imo.

HOWEVER, where I don't go near as far as people like Peter Singer is that I don't think that all actions need to be optimal on the societal scale for you to be a decent person. Again, people get too caught up in rhetoric here and think that pointing it out to them that their use of money results in 10 less lives being saved than other uses of that money is calling them "murderers" and all that stuff. I can see an argument that says, "buying a condo is a non-optimal use of money on a societal scale, but it is possible to do things that are good for me and me only and for that to be okay, and this is okay." I feel that there's a line somewhere, but I have no idea where it is and it's not relevant to this convo anyway.

Now I admit that I was wrong when I said that the only difference between the pushing the button thing and the shooting a rich man in the face thing is the agency. This is wrong. The biggest difference for me is actually that pushing the button is an exception to the categorical imperative. On the other hand, killing anyone who uses their money non-optimally and using their money in a way that nets more than 1 life (after adjusting for life potential, etc.) gets VERY sticky for the categorical imperative.

This should be very easily understandable for poker players who understand meta-game and shania. Basically, pushing the button is an "in the vacuum" scenario because it's going to come up SO infrequently that deeming that it's okay for anyone who's ever in that scenario to take the money and use it to save lives is a fairly uncomplicated decision. On the other hand, when you're talking about more common actions, then you have to kind of form a range that optimizes overall outcome (simply killing anyone who in a vacuum saves lives leads to a society that's so brutish that you've actually made life shitty for everyone).

It's actually funny because that last part with the categorical imperative is like literally the introduction to my novel (which is about someone who uses eV calcs to justify being a vigilante who kills terrible lobbyists and shit).

[eugmac]

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

[surviva316]

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

In case there's a shade of seriousness to that, I'll rebut.

1) I obviously doubt that hypothetical is viable (I mean, ldo, but just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's not a relevant point).

2) Utilitarianism doesn't mean that you CAN'T account for distribution of value. You can plug whatever considerations you want into the equation to determine which leads to an overall better society; it doesn't HAVE to be just a raw "happiness" number or whatever.

You could argue that this is a deviation from old-school, John Stuart Mill-style utilitarianism, but I don't give a shit about the semantics of it. Call it neo-utilitarianism whatever the fuck you want, I don't give a shit.

[!Luck]

TIL money is a superhero that can save people's lives.





Edit: I heard a version of this that involved pressing a spacebar on your computer, where some random person would die, and you would win 1000$ for every time you pressed it. It could in no way be traced back to you, but you would be made aware of the people you killed.

Would you press it, and how many times? :O

100=1mil. Prob 500 times. Maybe more. Would press it for less. Wouldn't even donate money either since I don't do that now, unless I can expense or politically motivated.

[eugmac]

Maybe I would press space 7 billion times to save the Earth.

[a500lbgorilla]

World's population: ~7,000,000,000 people
China's population: ~1,340,000,000 people
India's population: ~1,240,000,000 people
Europe's population: ~739,000,000 people
America's population: ~311,500,000 people

As I see it a 2.5 in 7 chance to kill someone in India or China.
A scant 1 in 7 chance to kill someone who might matter (Europe or America) And some of those Euros are Italian, so the numbers are getting better.

~8% of the population is elderly, so that means you're really only killing 92% of a person with each space.

I'd click the space bar 10 times a week for the rest of my days.

[eugmac]

chinese food, indian food, european food (taking an average... french and italian good, german and english not so much) >>>>> american food

so in your world the best cooks would perish.

let's bias this spacebar to prefer to kill by co2 footprint, or something. it's an ecologically aware spacebar.

[a500lbgorilla]

chinese food, indian food, european food (taking an average... french and italian good, german and english not so much) >>>>> american food

lol who gives a shit?

[eugmac]

i like food

[JKDS]

Ive been devils advocating for a bit...but id honestly push it and not care at all and be entirely selfish. Am i a bad person?

Im genuinely surprised so many people wouldnt push it o.o

[spoonitnow]

Ive been devils advocating for a bit...but id honestly push it and not care at all and be entirely selfish. Am i a bad person?

Im genuinely surprised so many people wouldnt push it o.o

But DUDE that's wrong! omg

[boost]

chinese food, indian food, european food (taking an average... french and italian good, german and english not so much) >>>>> american food

so in your world the best cooks would perish.

let's bias this spacebar to prefer to kill by co2 footprint, or something. it's an ecologically aware spacebar.

lolwat. New American is fucking amazing. Maybe cooks of the best ethnic cuisines would die at an unproportionate rate, but saying those are the best cooks is a stretch. The best cooks in the world are surely more prevalent in the US, France, Spain, and Canada. Hong Kong is likely in that list too if judged separate from the mainland.

[Renton]

I think that arguing against using 20 million dollars to save lives is kind of dumb. Yeah a lump sum transfer to the cameroonian gov't isn't going to do much, but if you go to one of these african shitholes and use the money to build and operate a hospital, or use it to buy and distribute mosquito nets to every village in africa, then probably you will directly be saving a shitload of lives.

[eugmac]

boost. u just asssociated Spain with cuisine invalidating your post. I've been there. fucking shithole.

[rong]

Was in Barcelona this week, had some lovely food. You just gotta avoid tourist areas and get a little lucky I guess, just like everywhere else.

[rong]

I think that arguing against using 20 million dollars to save lives is kind of dumb. Yeah a lump sum transfer to the cameroonian gov't isn't going to do much, but if you go to one of these african shitholes and use the money to build and operate a hospital, or use it to buy and distribute mosquito nets to every village in africa, then probably you will directly be saving a shitload of lives.

Do we have to filter in the war that the dramatic population increase in whichever African area you distributed your mosquito nets inevitably leads to?

[eugmac]

I also never take food advice from a Briton.

[rong]

As a general rule, I can't argue with that.

[Pascal]

Britain has bad food but America has worse, so we win that one

[Luco]

As a brit, I am proud of the education system here in Britland... but not so proud of the food. I enjoy hotpot, sunday roast, fish and chips etc but they're not my favourite meals.

chinese food, indian food, european food (taking an average... french and italian good, german and english not so much) >>>>> american food

Pretty much this except I'd swap Indian and Chinese. Nothing beats a ruby. Except maybe lasagne.

I still wouldn't press the button as I'd never know if I'd killed someone who really didn't deserve it. Strangely though I could personally perform the execution if I knew 100% the world would be better off without the victim (rapist, murderer, whatever)

[eugmac]

I was under the impression that UK has a pretty horrible split in quality between comprehensive ("public" in North American verbiage) and public (actually private, retardedly) schools.

Similar to how there's two tiers of healthcare - NHS, and express private service for those who can afford it.

[rong]

It's a postcode lottery with schools. There's some great comprehensives but you need to live in the right catchment area. Similar houses a few streets apart can vary considerably in value down to the school you'd qualify for.

[boost]

boost. u just asssociated Spain with cuisine invalidating your post. I've been there. fucking shithole.

elBulli is in Spain. But you are clearly missing my point. The best cooks and best cuisine do not often share the same geographical location.

[surviva316]

elBulli is in Spain. But you are clearly missing my point. The best cooks and best cuisine do not often share the same geographical location.

Is the implication here that Spain's cuisine is sub-par? This is not at all my understanding, though I'm extremely biased espanaphile.

[Jack Sawyer]

elBulli was in Spain. But you are clearly missing my point.

tftfy

[boost]

Is the implication here that Spain's cuisine is sub-par? This is not at all my understanding, though I'm extremely biased espanaphile.

No, my point is... actually I'm not even sure what my point was, as now that I reflect on the premise which I was responding to, I realize that it doesn't even make sense in the first place.

[eugmac]

ya, the premise was facetious. i dunno what y'all are getting your knickers in a twist for. fwiw my impression of spanish food was that everything was just fried in olive oil. everything.

[Micro2Macro]

eugmac are you still in berlin?

[eugmac]

hey m2m, yes in berlin.

[surviva316]

ya, the premise was facetious. i dunno what y'all are getting your knickers in a twist for. fwiw my impression of spanish food was that everything was just fried in olive oil. everything.

Yes, it's gonna take a little bit of creativity to throw together a multiple-course Spanish meal if you're out of olive oil and garlic. But obviously the same exact thing could be said about Italian cuisine, which made your list of two exceptional European cuisines.

Among other things, Spain also has really good charcuterie-type things, especially their blue cheeses. I say "charcuterie-type things" because I'm including things like sardines, which is obviously not a cured meat or a cheese, but it's the same type of thing where you can eat it cold on a piece of crostini with nothing else and it's delicious.

Spain is also a really under-appreciated wine producer. They probably deserve to be third-rate to Italy and France (I only say probably because I don't know much about authentic Italian wines), but Rioja produces a lot of very good wines, and Sherry is the best god-damned alcoholic drink in the world outside of scotch (now I'm obviously speaking out of my ass, but I love(d) sherry). I can't speak to Cava vs other sparkling wines because I was never very into sparkling wines.

Anyway, is this thread permanently derailed? Did I ruin it by using some Wikipedia buzz words on ethics?

[Pascal]

As a brit, I am proud of the education system here in Britland... but not so proud of the food. I enjoy hotpot, sunday roast, fish and chips etc but they're not my favourite meals.



Pretty much this except I'd swap Indian and Chinese. Nothing beats a ruby. Except maybe lasagne.

I still wouldn't press the button as I'd never know if I'd killed someone who really didn't deserve it. Strangely though I could personally perform the execution if I knew 100% the world would be better off without the victim (rapist, murderer, whatever)

FWIW when I say "British food" I'd include all the dishes common in the UK which you wouldn't really find anywhere else, which includes a lot of dishes which didn't culturally start as British dishes (lots of curries, Chinese dishes, Italian dishes, etc) but have now become British-ized over decades.