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E271's Waterfall RSS

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1 point

I would say if the animal was more happy in the life before it was eaten then not, it is completely fine to eat it.

Should more people stop eating caged animal products? Yes.

Should more people refuse to support ethical farms in which livestock are given a time period to enjoy being alive in contrast to never existing in the first place (in the case of the farm not existing). Unless there is a medical concern (i.e. allergy), I don't see any reason to.

1 point

How 'perfect, loving,' God deals with a subject even though he 'loves us all.' "Hey David, you should kill Goliath with a slingshot. I'll help you out."

Maybe I would be better off with a diary of people murdered with a slingshot

(p.s. I forgot to make this a dispute and can't fix it)

2 points

"So therefore, my answers to thes mass shootings has nothing to do with gun restrictions because we know it does not work."

Seriously???

Let's do some comparison here:

America - Someone decides to shoot people. They then buy a semi automatic gun at the local walmart and kill tens of people very quickly during a hormonal impulse.

Australia - Someone decides to shoot people. They are under 18 and can't get a gun. Or they are over 18, but cannot provide a legitimate reason to get one (which would be checked). Ok, they managed to come up with a reason. Now they have to wait several weeks and complete licensing before they can actually get a gun, in which time their impulse has probably died. But now assume it's deeper. They are limited only to a gun which they must manually reload. They use this to shoot 1-2 people before being overpowered or having all their potential victims escape.

Big difference. Gun laws do work, it's just the US's 'No we can't possibly be self preservative because we're too busy conforming to everyone else who says guns are good,' culture is preventing it from happening.

Also, people can claim to be Christian and blatantly ignore any actual words in the bible which don't agree with their actions. It happens all the time.

1 point

The bible was constructed over 2000 years ago, where things were very different. Sure, many of it's morals are still useful, but it cannot adapt to changes in the world and should not be used as an absolute basis for whether or not something is morally acceptable.

1 point

While the concept of a password/pin is a useful way to manage finances etc, with our current technology there are many alternatives such as fingerprints, voice recognition and so on. These alternatives, if implemented instead, would negate the need for such security over a number. Additionally, false purchases etc would be much more easy to recognise/dispute if you could identify whether or not the purchaser was the same person as the owner of the money they were using, which is not viable in the current degree of information restrictions.

Ps I don't have a SSN. :)

1 point

In this instance whoever cut the last rope would be responsible.

Using this logic, you would be responsible for the death of the drowning person. Since the option for you to save him occurred after the event which made him begin drown, your inactivity would be the last event before the person drowned, and in fact imply that the event which initiated his drowning was not responsible.

Also, causation might not be a simple no either. The opposite of refusing to help is helping someone which could have saved them, in which the drowning person may have survived. So the act of not saving the person could be said to be a cause (not the unique cause but one of them) of his drowning.

1 point

Except, humour is typically generated only by something being strange or abnormal. For example, if pigs were not consumed then it may be perceived that herding pigs would be a funny profession, by due to the commonplace of it it currently is not. As humour is very subjective to the immediate context, I do not think there would be a significant long term improvement in the frequency of people laughing as a result of cat herding becoming a viable profession.

1 point

Unlike traditional livestock such as pigs and sheep, there are many health risks involved in creating food products from carnivorous creatures such as cats and dogs. These come with a much larger risk of parasites and diseases contractible by humans, while herbivores tend to contract comparitively much fewer diseases which can be passed on to humans. Ensuring it is not legal to eat these animals creates a much safer food environment and helps to prevent the spread of things such as worms which can be difficult to cure and greatly reduce a persons productivity during this period.

1 point

Information is the basis for all decisions and control in life. It brings us security, efficiency and without it, we could never improve or learn from our mistakes. So why should such a fundamental asset to progress be withheld?

The restriction of information is key in unbalancing the outcome of an action, often at significant cost to the ignorant party. For example, in many food products people are restricted from learning how the animals are treated, which can result in conflicts of ethics by people who would never support animal cruelty funding it out of unawareness.

Conflicts such as these would be much more easily resolvable if the information was freely avaliable, and with the world wide web now commonplace it would not be difficult to acheive, allowing people to follow their ethics and to ensure people have a say in decisions which affect them, rather than just being used to support an individual at cost to many people.

1 point

Except it isn't torcher...abortion is done very efficiently in order to prevent a torcherous life if the baby cannot be cared for.

1 point

Yes. Because they already have.

European culture is only one of a variety of succesful cultures, and is relatively recent. For example, the Australian Indigenous survived very succesfully in the wild for many, many years. Knowledge such as this already exists, so in the event of us returning from the trees, what would prevent us from using this knowledge to survive?

1 point

You are right that mentally ill people can recover. But can is not a certainty, and at some point (assuming the death penalty was not used) you would need to make a choice: imprison them for life, or release them.

Beginning with the case of permenant imprisonment: Currently, permenantly mentally ill people are sent to 'special hospitals.' However, there is no guarantee that they acheive the best, or even decent "care for their condition." For example, many mentally ill people are constantly drugged and locked into rooms where their mobility is restricted and they are forced to do activities decided on only by others. They may be alive. But if their entire life is limited to the forced decisions of others with no joy, free will or creativity, then what advantage do they have from being alive? Is it really better to create a life if it is never enjoyed?

Now for the case of releasing them: You are correct in saying that mentally ill people can recover. But people are not released directly because they recovered, they are released because they appear recovered in the eyes of others. This can come with many significant risks, as people may relapse or never really have recovered in the first place, and this may cause them to kill again causing the death of many innocents, especially in America where the gun laws are not sufficient to prevent one person from easily killing dozens. If you value life, then the goal would of course be to preserve as much life as possible. So, why risks dozens to gamble on one? We should value life, but with that heuristic we should value the lives of potential victims just as much as the murderer. So if it is not right to release them and is not right to imprison them forever, what else can we morally do but execute them?

While things such as false conviction and government power are an inherent risk, there are also many laws implemented to mitigate these, such as the haebus corpus, allowing people to challenge a false conviction if there was power abuse involved in the original court case.

Finally, you claim that the government shouldn't teach people not to kill by killing. But for an effective justice system, complications like this are completely avoidable. The government also prevents individuals from stealing money and restraining others. However, fines and jail are still used as a punishment in many cases, and if the government could only punish individuals to the same extent as an individual, either the punishment system would be negligible and completely fail as a deterrent or people could easily start attacking people due to the sole reason that it is used as a punishment by the authorities.

1 point

We might be able to teach them. They might change. But how can we actually know that they have? Many people, especially criminals such as killers, lie in order to gain an advantage such as leaving prison. However, when we choose to release someone we can only make an educated guess about whether or not they have really changed, which can result in the deaths of completely innocent people if we get wrong. Also, even if they have changed, people can often change back, especially if they know they can escapce punishment. Capital punishment, on the other hand, is certain. There is no risk, and we know they cannot kill again.

Can we really give murderers the choice to kill again and just 'hope for the best?'

0 points

I think if someone cannot prevent themselves from killing due to a mental ilness etc, this is exactly when the punishment makes the most sense, as you cannot deter someone from doing something they have no control over. So in these "9/10...case[s]", the only option left is to forcibly prevent them from murdering people, which could be acheived either through lifetime imprisonment or execution. In the case of lifetime imprisonment, the money used could easily contribute to paying hospital bills of many innocent people suffering from ilnesses such as upper tooth infections or cancer, which could be lethal if not treated. For example, the average yearly cost of a prisoner is ~$31,286 (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/nyregion/citys-annual-cost-per-inmate-is-nearly-168000-study-says.html). .) Assume an adult life equates to 60 years. This would become a cost of $1,877,160, which would be enough to save hundred of lives. And the lives saved through hospital could actually enjoy life with free choices and will. In contrast, a permenant prisoner would never have any control over what they can acheive, and so do not really have the opportunities and potential of someone who can safely be allowed to make their own choices.

Also, the goal of punishment is to prevent a crime from being committed again. Theives do not have something taken in return because it is not the most effective countermeasure: they might attempt to steal it back for example creating another crime instance. People who wreck cars do not have their car wrecked because it can create a sense of normality of wrecking cars. However in both cases, there is justal intervention to prevent the crime in an effective and efficient manner. So, if the most effective measure to save many innocent people is to kill one, how is it not the best option avaliable?

1 point

Except the debate is not about how someone should be punished: rather it is just about whether or not someone is directly responsible. If someone dropped a plate by accident, then there would be no reason to punish them since it was not malicious. However, they are still technically responsible for breaking the plate. Likewise, there may be a valid reason for inactivity, such as a fear of the drowning person sinking you, however you are still responsible even though you should'nt be punished.

3 points

You claim that you are not responsible for his death because the cause of him starting to drown is responsible for his death, however it is completely possible for both you and the drowning cause to be mutually responsible. As an example, imagine someone was bungee jumping with two ropes. You cut one rope, and a separate person cut another. In each case, a person could argue that the other person was responsible for his death. However, your actions equally determined that he died instead of surviving. For this reason, I would claim that technically you are responsible for his death by choosing an action which resulted in his death from a set of actions in which he could not have died.



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