[Poll] Could you abandon a dying person?

Huh, but I still contest this statement.

There is nothing stopping someone (a dictator) from setting up a legal system with whatever the heck that they want.

It doesn't mean that the state they create will be long-lived, or that it serves the interests of all the people living inside of the state -- however, the creation of a state has no underlying requirement to satisfy morality, and this is generally true in history.

You can point to "revolution" if people are disgruntled (and there are always people who are disgruntled), but revolution against authority figures has been a pervasive element throughout all history. In no way or fashion is revolution guaranteed to succeed, and in fact historically in most circumstances revolution was far more likely to fail than succeed.

The French Revolution (1789) is remarkable particularly because it is literally the first incidence in the Western history for a revolution led by the proletariat to overturn the ruling authority to form a government that serves the proletariat. The French Revolution was a spark that led to a cascade of other revolutions, notably the Revolutions of 1848 -- a massive revolutionary wave through Europe where many countries removed their monarchal systems of government.

I think this is a very complicated situation that is very disconcerting for people.

When you tell people that their very morality is externally/socially impressed onto them from a young age, most people are naturally resistant and resent such an affront on their very identity.

Identity philosophy/politics is very complicated, and I'm unwilling to tease out the fabric of subconscious repression or whatever else have you -- because if you generalize this kind of argument far enough, all of us have subconscious elements of our psyche and identities that are subconsciously projected onto us. The immorality of nudity is actually a fantastic example here, and I only mention it because there are many aspects of our morality, personal values, and self-identity that are non-consensually impressioned onto us since our youth -- yet rejecting these things are very complicated because they make up a piece of our identities.

I'm unsure, still. I don't believe that justice systems are foundationally built on morality. Rather, they are built upon the popular opinion of people with the power the make laws in society.

To some extent there is a certain degree of overlap between popular opinion and morality, but I think you would be somewhat mistaken/naive to assume that the world functions through a philosophical pursuit of "being moral".

We can use morality and moral reasoning to guide our own behavior -- however, I think we overstep boundaries when you start arguing that morality is the foundational pillar that government/justice/law is created around, in all practicality.

Again, this is a distinction between what I think is the case historically, and what is likely to continue being the case in the future -- versus what should be the case in an ideal world. Reality and the the ideal world can often be different in this regard.

 

And this is quite important. I am trying to get you, following what I think is good tradition, to exclude short-lived, rogue states. Like, who the heck even wants to be remembered as a tyrant? True evil is actually rather rare.

The C scholarly circles have this saying: Barbarians don't get to rule for a century. While the wording is literally racist, the racism is a failure on their part of realise they were being racists. They were, instead, trying to mean something equivalent to a sentiment of the infamous Treaty of Versailles, namely that the German 2nd Reich was a barbaric rogue state founded upon banditry, and thus deserving of its ruin in WWI.

The point is that if you unnaturally stretch the definitions of a state to include all these failure cases, you cause problems for productive discourse.

Those that actually manage to govern a large place, with many people, over a long time, all have at least some pretences at being legitimate. And in fact there is a lot of interesting parallels that organise history neatly. For example, the Roman empire lasted for a millennia because it is a rather stable configuration, as the C had learnt. Namely, pre-Qin unification, the Zhou dynasty was the functional equivalent. Both of them have a somewhat ceremonial emperor at the top, and the actual powers are with the warlords, who constantly wage war amongst themselves. Since the transition of power is constantly happening and not needing to bother with the ceremonial emperor, the resultant empire configuration is stable in name for a long time, and hence the historical situation is as it is. But at some point, that becomes unstable too, partly because of overpopulation. The rate of power struggles, obviously upon hindsight, increases with the total population size, and at some point some smart and annoyed king will unify the lands. C style unification into a centralised ruling system was kind of inevitable, because the population started churning out so many capable generals and scholars, that fights become way too dangerous, damaging, and you all know the saying: Too many cooks spoil the broth. So, from Qin onwards, the empires live for way shorter, but between actual revolutions, the general populace gets to enjoy centuries of peace, and that is undeniably less bloody than the European model.

Note that, when you have many warlords, the effect is a far greater amplification of noise. That is, banditry focused rogue states get to stay in power for a lot longer and more often when you always have enemies around you. It hinders organising together to punish an aggressor, amongst other things.

So, again, if you merely want to describe all states throughout history, you are free to just use the useless definition. But if you actually want to make sense of history and why historians are inimical to the notion of might makes right, you have to learn a lot and ponder these issues a lot. Legitimacy is important. If a ruler wants to be remembered nicely by history, they have to make sure to be nice. And morality then comes in. Otherwise, if you go around acting like a gangster, obviously you have no moral system in place in your laws, and you can expect to rule for about a century. And then your children / grandchildren might all be executed. Heck, even if you start off with a good rule, if one of your grandchildren marries a poisonous snake for a wife, who goes around ordering the assassination of all the extended family, you are screwed too.

Yes, and part of the point of education is to learn real world facts, even if they might be considered painful to feelings. Almost 2 decades of 9/11 aftermath, and you wanna continue leaving stuff out because feelings might be hurt? If you want to go back to living in caves, i.e. no NU to read novels with, please, feel free to ignore moral education.

This is simply not true. I ask my lawyer friends tell me about their courses, and it is always filled with groans when it comes to amorality. A large chunk of lawyer training is to train people to come to sensible judgements, and to do that, they draw upon moral lessons from history, especially from the standard philosophy giants. You can also watch law lectures online these days and verify for yourself that, whether they actually achieve progressive ideals or not, they at least seriously put up a pretence at being thoughtful and nice. And you can't do that without arguing a lot about morality. (And I was thinking about Michael Sandel, the Harvard law professor, who is then accused of exporting only his views, lol.)

 

I think we have a difference in perspectives here.

In economics there are generally speaking two disciplinary branches:

• Normative Economics - Which focuses on what the economy "should be"
• Positive Economics - Which focuses on "describing" what the economy is (or was)

And I think this is probably generalizable to many fields and disciplines as well.

In academia, the description, quantification, and explanation of real world phenomena is scientific in nature. Economics is a quantitative science when you focus on the positive side, however this scientific component evaporates when you drift onto the normative side.

Consequently, I can't in good conscience as a scientist (whether as a social scientist or historical scientist) -- to exclude portions of history that are inconvenient for the definition of a word or analysis as a whole.

The word "state" encompasses both short-lived and long-lived states (totalitarian and democratic / pick your favorite diametric binary), and to repurpose the word itself sort of runs counter to linguistics.

Personally, I tend to shy away from normative assessments in favor of focusing on the descriptive assessments.

I prefer to deal in: "X + Y = Z" rather than "X is a universal self-evident human right."

It's merely the nature of my training and to some degree a component of my beliefs.

I genuinely believe it is better for society if you question your normative values and focus instead on descriptive truths to understand the world. If you assume subjectivity, there is still a lot of things you can learn about the world, and you've probably observed that we both converge on similar values even though our thought process is different.

I simply disagree. You study the "failure" cases in order to gain insights about the positive (descriptive) truths about the world.

You can't discard data. That literally introduces bias, and discarding data is ethically equivalent to fabricating data if you submit something to publication in a scientific journal.

There is plenty of productive discourse that can be obtained by attempting to formulate the most precise description of reality.

Once you have an accurate description and understanding of reality, the next step is to apply normative values and figure out where you want to go next.

I don't really know why, but I sort of find this kind of statement very unattractive.

I feel like how a state functions should be irrelevant to how they want to be remembered by history.

Maybe it is because I have strong instinctual feelings towards an unbiased interpretation of history. The very notion that people are manipulating the recording-keeping process (which of course, inevitably happens), just feels somewhat repulsive to me.

This is probably my own personal moral values bleeding into here, but if you do good things, you shouldn't do them just because there are observers watching you.

I think we have a different understanding of moral and philosophical education?

To me, the point is for people to understand that there are different moralities and philosophies -- not to engrain onto people a "right" system that they should follow.

For example, you should teach people about utilitarianism and Aristotle -- but you shouldn't tell them which system is "right" or what they should adhere to.

Well of course, we live in a binary world with binary outcomes.

When you present people with a binary decision problem with individual actors, "morality" of the actors in question is naturally evoked.

The question is whose morality or what system of morality (e.g. do you Trolley problem using utilitarianism or filial piety?) you employ.

I'm not denying that morality exists, and it's fashionable in the current world for people to employ morality to construct their own governments, but I don't believe that this is an inherent inevitable timeless truth of the universe. This is more of a predictive argument about the natural history of things than anything else.

The statement: "I believe that the world will continue to become a better place."

Has no basis in any amount of science or really anything except a sentimental appeal (or hope or aspiration).

Rather, if you are a historian to any degree, everything rises and falls in cycles.

 

Why not? Give myself undying determination, unbending will, wisdom of the old, and just enough intelligence. I would surely be able to think of a solution then! HA! HA! HA!

 

Nobody is saying that we should be discarding data. You can also specifically focus upon the failure cases and learn a great deal out of them, one of which is that they don't last long. In fact, as a general rule, failure cases teach us more than success cases, and no self-respecting scientist will ask you to do the equivalent of writing "5 habits of highly successful people" nonsense. OMG, that was so bad.

But if you do any statistics, removal of explained/known outliers is literally the only correct scientific thing to do. You still have to build a model. Your kind of argument here is closer to climate denial than you might think.

That is very good, but it is a known empirical fact that humans don't live up to this ideal. From consequentialism, whatever motivates people to do good actions is something you want to encourage, even if it is all just a sham, a delusion. Or even if a person convinces himself that he is doing everything for evil ends, but ends up doing a lot of good, that is fine too (Think Legendary Moonlight Sculptor and Overgeared).

Yes, when teaching, you do that.
But trolley problems are now an applied problem. We have no choice but to pick some option. Different companies pick different ones. Different countries pick different law guidelines.

You must have a guideline as to what you send to jail and what you do not.
There is no example of a modern first world country whose legal system does not at least pretend to be based upon moral foundations. I bow out of your intentional entertainment of rogue states. You may have the last word.

 

I'm still confused about this.

My personal opinion about the trolley problem is that so long as you pick a solution, and people are willing to accept it, then it is fine.

I won't blame a person who kills the one family member to save five strangers because they were acting out of utilitarianism.

I also won't blame a person who kills the five strangers to save one family member because they were acting out of filial piety.

I'm a little lost about how deeply you can overthink one policy.

A country or state is composed of many policies.

One country may have a restrictive citizenship law that you can only become a citizen if one or both of your parents were citizens.

Another country may have a loose citizenship law that you can become a citizen if you were born on the soil of that country.

Both have their upsides are downsides, and you can argue forever about the two -- but the reality is that some countries will choose one, and some other countries will chose the other. Which one is chosen depends on the popular view of the legislators (who in theory reflect the popular view of their electorate) -- but again, I'm not really going to sit here arguing that one is objectively better than the other?

I am somewhat democratic in spirit -- and I do believe that the popular opinion of the majority should guide the rule of law.

As long as you define an objective that many people can accept, and you draft a law that fulfills that objective, then you have a policy and perhaps an implementation.

 

The doctor is an entitled asshole feeling entitled to my help and attempting to shame me into doing it. I don't owe him, or the people in the slums anything. You don't ask for someone's grace by trying to shame them into it - what a lack of manners.
How about I effortlessly vaporize said doctor for the crime of pissing me off...

Better yet, "since you're so big on this, how about you do it, and you do it, and you do it..." and effortlessly clone said doctor to make an army of minions willing to go out and help people (quantity over quality) - even if it takes an hour per patient, with enough doctor clones they'll eventually surpass my own efficiency, taking into account time I waste sleeping and moving around.
- Then keep the original doctor around and torture him for the crime of pissing me off.

1. Do you agree with the doctor? Is refusing to save someone when you could easily do so the same as killing them?
No. Even if saving them is the right thing to do, and ignoring them may be wrong. Your action is not their right. Expecting it is an unjustified entitlement.
Helping them would be out of grace, not responsibility.

I do not want to help anyone who feel entitled to use my power for themselves.
Trying to shame away someone's free will only prove you as someone not worthy of their grace.

2. Does great power come with great responsibility?
With great power comes great responsibility - to not ABUSE that power. It does come with the responsibility to use it for others.

3. Would you still want a crazy OP cheat power despite being presented with this scenario?
Would you rather be thrown into such a shitty isekai without it? - I think not!
I could find better ways to help while leaving time for myself.

4. If you had the ability to heal anyone that you touch, would you spend all day in the hospital? Would you overwork yourself? Would you feel guilty about saying no to all the life-or-death patients trying to schedule an appointment because you’re thinking about going on vacation?
I think I'll just go live a quiet life out in the country, and people desperate enough to want my help can prove their worth by coming to find me.

 

@lychee

Just read another chapter from "The Monk that Wanted to Renounce Asceticism". One of MC's powers is the ability to heal people (short of resurrection), and the choice he faced on whether to disclose his powers to the public.
It's similar to what @Mr_Magika was saying (teach a man to fish), but brings an additional interesting perspective that I'm not sure was fully considered/discussed in subsequent posts.

Posted the excerpt below. And yes, no pun intended, but there literally is a character in the novel called Salted Fish. Because he was a salted fish that gained sentience


SPOILER ALERT
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"...Yet after you did all these good deeds, you actually ran when it was time to be rewarded! Especially when saving that kid. You didn’t even show your face. You did it while completely invisible! You didn’t even try to fight for such great merit. What were you doing all of that for?” Salted Fish asked all the questions on his mind.

Fangzheng patted the fish on his head and said, “First, there are certain things that This Penniless Monk shouldn’t fight for. Second, there’s something wrong with what you said. Although This Penniless Monk did his best on this matter, the others weren’t idle either. This Penniless Monk cheated with his divine powers, but the rest helped by putting in their own effort. On this point, This Penniless Monk is inferior to them.

“As for saving Wang Dayou’s son… What kind of explanation do you think This Penniless Monk will have to give once it is discovered that This Penniless Monk appeared and saved him? Explain medicine to them? Even if This Penniless Monk can win a debate against everyone, how is he to explain where his medical skills come from? The medical skills This Penniless Monk possesses far exceed what this world has. This is something that cannot see the light.”

“You could refer it to a divine power, that Buddha descended, or Bodhisattva possessed you!”

Fangzheng said, “Then in the end, wouldn’t everyone thank Buddha and Bodhisattva? Do you think they would find it nice to accept such gratitude? Salted Fish, our world isn’t the immortal world you lived in. No one except This Penniless Monk has divine powers in this world. This Penniless Monk is limited in capability, limited in what he can do. The ones who are really saving people everyday are the doctors on the front lines. This Penniless Monk can use divine powers to beat all doctors and become famous, raising Buddhism’s standing in this world to an unprecedented state!

“But have you thought of the consequences? It would be the uplifting of Buddhism, but the diminishing of medicine. People would only believe in deities and Buddha and not science! In our world, deities and Buddha are both a crutch for the mind and a form of liberation. It is a pursuit of insight into the soul and the source for why all life pursues goodness.

“However, this world’s people cannot leave the material and live solely on their beliefs alone. Too much belief in deities or Buddha would result in the stagnation of mundane progress. Production would fall, as well as other businesses. Thousands of years of hard work put in by humanity would be undone! That’s not merit but a heinous sin!”

Salted Fish was stunned. He was not a person of this world. When considering problems, he would subconsciously use his world view from the other world. Now, with Fangzheng telling him this, he fell into deep thought. Only after a while did he smack his lips and say, “It seems that would be the case… But, based on what you said, wouldn’t believing in Buddha be a sin?”

Fangzheng shook his head. “Exactly the opposite. As the ancients say, inadequate merit results in trouble. Material development has to have a corresponding mental realm as a foundation; otherwise, there will be a situation of inadequate merit.

“Rapid material development which lacks a mental crutch and belief results in the loss of morals. Then, money is seen as the be all and end all, with interests being all that matters. That is evil. Such an outcome is similarly terrifying! The loss of what is material is the death of a human, but the loss of mental beliefs would be the loss of humanity. Humans would no longer be humans as they would plunder everything. This would lead to the death of everything, including humanity itself! This is the evil of our world.

“Therefore, be it Buddhists, Daoists, or all the other saints from the various schools of thought⁠—Eastern or Western⁠—everyone has morals as a yardstick. What is preached is always to lead people to do good. It’s all about subduing evil. Hence, there’s no talk about which is more important. Progressing forward in a balanced manner is what matters.”

 

Seems like I've got a different opinion from most others here! Neat hearing people's takes on this moral quandary.

1. I disagree that it's killing them to not save them, even if it's effortless for you to do so. But I do believe you have a duty to save anyone and everyone you can.

2. I believe great power does come with great responsibility, if you've got great power it's your duty to use it wisely and responsibly. Though what responsible ultimately looks like differs for each individual.

3. I would still accept a cheat OP ability, even if this was the only path I could take.

4. I would do everything in my power to help as many people as I could, I'd forget vacations and push forward to help people.

Naive view? Maybe, but I'd rather have to help an infinite number of people for all of time than be powerless to help. Being powerless is worse than any amount of work.

 

. Do you agree with the doctor? Is refusing to save someone when you could easily do so the same as killing them?
I feel pretty neutral about what the doctor is saying,I understand where their coming from and why they think the way they do. I guess in some ways the doctor is right and we are in our own way, slightly responsible for the death of others, but isn't that true even in this world? I guess killing people off indirectly is much easier for the conscious to ignore thoooo
2. Does great power come with great responsibility?
I wouldn't say responsibility, but at the very least something like an obligation to not let your powers trouble others
3. Would you still want a crazy OP cheat power despite being presented with this scenario?
nahhhhh i don't like that kind of thing, and while it would be fun to have that kind of ability it would be really wasted on someone like me, I'd just do what everyone else in this situation does and try my best to live off the knowledge from my world. If that won't work than I'd rather be some cook in the village or smthggggg
4. If you had the ability to heal anyone that you touch, would you spend all day in the hospital? Would you overwork yourself? Would you feel guilty about saying no to all the life-or-death patients trying to schedule an appointment because you’re thinking about going on vacation?
Despite everything I've said I'd still go to that hospital to cure as many people as possible, I wouldn't overwork myself because what good would I be if I were dead? I'd spend as much time as someone in my position could in the hospital.
I'd feel guilty about something like that only if I liked those patients, and if I did like any certain patients then I'd cure them and then run to my vacationnnn

 

1. Do you agree with the doctor? Is refusing to save someone when you could easily do so the same as killing them?
No. Not in this situation. Certainly I *would* have a responsibility to use these powers well, but who's to say the best way would be to heal sick and injured people? If I could use the powers to lower the poverty instead, wouldn't that be much better? I mean.. yes, healing is good, but if I cure someone of the plague but they live in a disgusting unhygienic sludge-hole together with other people who also have the plague... they will just catch it again.

If I spend all my time healing sick people for free, that means I'm not improving hygiene conditions, I'm not creating renewable food sources, I'm not earning money that I could invest in things like medical research or other things with a ripple effect. In fact, if I wanted to do the greatest amount of good (which may or may not even be something I'd be willing to do) then endlessly healing people is only efficient in the short term. Eventually I'd die (perhaps I'd get killed, or perhaps I'd be blessed with a long life and die from age, but in the end I would die). Then what? And who am I healing? If I'm out there adventuring, healing people who protects the rest of humanity from monsters or something, wouldn't that save more people in the end than endlessly healing the inhabitants of the slum, who are certainly also people with dreams and aspirations but who can't get out of their financial reality to get the training and equipment needed to change the fact that 80% of humanity lives in the slums? The doctor has a point but it's not that simple.

2. Does great power come with great responsibility?
Yes. But not to the point where I break my mental health. I suspect that if I went from a relatively safe life in a peaceful country on Earth, to an endless slum where my days was filled with an endless stream of dying people, I would lose my mind from the chock, guilt, and a few other things.

3. Would you still want a crazy OP cheat power despite being presented with this scenario?
Sure! I could just disappear after all and not re-make this mistake that exposed me to the doctor. It would be pretty easy to change my appearance and hide in the crowd, so I guess my best option would be to be honest with the doctor, say I didn't intend to stay for very long, but keep healing patients for a few days to get a foothold in the world and then just make sure to be less noticeable in the future.

4. If you had the ability to heal anyone that you touch, would you spend all day in the hospital? Would you overwork yourself? Would you feel guilty about saying no to all the life-or-death patients trying to schedule an appointment because you’re thinking about going on vacation?
Yes and no.
Mental health is important. Burn-out syndrome is awful and can render someone to just... stare at a wall and that's their life. No going out of bed, no thinking clearly, no planning for anything, no meaning to anything you do, perhaps you're able to go through the motions of life or perhaps you can't even do that. What's the point of technically having the power to help people, if you can't use those powers.

I'd still probably feel guilty, but hopefully I could accept the fact that I'm still not the ultimate end to suffering.

 

First of all with your power you don't have to die and can live forever. Which brought me to my second realization, I can maintain a state of health and be free of exhaustion and boredom by activating my powers to refresh myself. Doing this and taking your suggestion I could speed up my time and cure everyone almost right away. I am unsure if my cheat fits with the laws of the world since it is a cheat but it does exist within the world. If it does I could also copy myself or give that doctor and others the power to heal and cure(like my own but with built-in limitations.

 

I choose help consistently I'm still a student realistic speaking I can only offer little food and little pocket money sometimes I help street kids but I can't help much since I'm a broke college student

 

I went a little off point trying to work around things but personally I would feel responsibility almost exclusively from guilt. I would help without that but it would be closer to a hobby that I might take seriously. I would probably do it from the pressure of my surroundings but taking it seriously would be because I don't want them to die. Besides, living in a world full of filth and corpses is not the way I want to live though I suppose just because the population is large from my perspective doesn't mean the planet can't be mostly unpopulated.