• basmati@lemmus.org
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    1 month ago

    It’s a basic philosophical question.

    Say you find yourself locked in a room with a gun, and two people tied to a chair. A voice announces that if you kill one of them, you and the other go free, if you don’t kill anyone or if you kill yourself, everyone dies.

    Your solution to this, voting Harris, is trust the voice is telling the truth and figure out who is the worse person so you don’t feel as bad about being a murderer.

    Their solution is not being a murderer.

    Maybe the voice is telling the truth, and thus the voice will be a murderer, but they won’t be – you would be though with your choice. Maybe the voice is lying, in which case they made the right choice and you objectively made the wrong one, the worst one.

    Most humans, ideally, would choose to not be murderers, even if that means a psychopath does a murder “because” you refused to.

    • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      In your example, their solution is absolutely being a murderer. They didn’t pull the trigger, but they condemned those people to death. They know that refusing is killing those people, that their refusal is the cause for those peoples deaths. I’m not saying that I don’t think Gaza is important, or that it’s not worth fighting for, but I extend that same importance to my countrymen as well. I think the woman who may need an abortion is important, even if I never get one. I think that my neighbor’s kids should have a save school, and not be laden I’m debt, even thought I don’t plan to have children.

      I cannot stop what’s going on in Gaza. It’s a horrible, terribly bitter pill to swallow, but it is the truth. However, I’m not going to set everyone else on fire so we can all burn together in solidarity. Too many other people’s lives are at stake. And I’m not saying their lives are more important than those in Gaza, I’m saying they’re just as important. Kill one person, or kill everyone. I would rather save someone than no one.

      • basmati@lemmus.org
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        1 month ago

        Exactly, you think being a murderer is okay.

        That is the core philosophical difference.

        You are completely okay with killing innocent people. These people are not, normal people are not.

        This difference cannot be reconciled. These people will never think the way you do, and thank every God ever imagined for that, as someone needs to be the moral party if only as an example of how normalized and justified pure evil is.

        • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          That’s not at all what I said, and I think you know that. Wanting to help someone is not the same as wanting to kill someone else. My vote doesn’t save Gaza, because there is unfortunately no option, but my vote could still help someone. Not voting, or throwing it away, literally doesn’t help anyone.

          I hope you find peace with your indecision and your cowardice should the rest of the country not be able to make up for your inactivity. But I’m sure those suffering in Gaza will feel better knowing that someone in Texas is bleeding out in the parking lot. That’ll show 'em.

        • Scirocco@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          Fucking ridiculous.

          A vote for anyone OTHER than Harris directly results in MORE Gazan suffering.

          Trump will not restrain Israel. On the contrary, he will encourage them to ‘end it’ and achieve “peace” by ACTUALLY genociding all remaining Palestine resistance.

          • basmati@lemmus.org
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            1 month ago

            There already has been no restraint from Biden. Genocide is genocide, and Harris supports genocide.

            I’m not voting for genocide, there is no moral argument to do so.

          • sorval_the_eeter@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            restrain Israel

            Are you really so deluded to beleive all of Bidens play acting about how he was seeking peace all this time? He used 0% of his levers to make peace happen and 100% of his levers to encourage Israels murder spree.

        • Djtecha@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          How are you not a murder in your role play here? By doing nothing everyone dies, that blood is ALSO on your hands for inaction.

          • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            Because it was a trick. You are being tricked by the voice that you are responsible for minimizing the harm they choose to inflict on the three people in the room, if that threat is even real in the first place.

            So to choose to murder anyone or kill yourself is a ridiculous position and most wouldnt take it. The voice will have to be the murderer here if thats what they want.

            Or you can believe the voice without question, and kill one of the people based on some arbitrary metric you come up with on the spot to justify you choosing to kill someone.

            So in this case, people are believing the lie, then choosing “the lesser of two evils” based on some arbitrary metric like “which ones better for the economy, since they both are genocidal”.

          • basmati@lemmus.org
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            1 month ago

            I’m not the one murdering them, quite literally. Just like in real life, there is no mystical unstoppable force of nature in play. It’s another person, like you. Their choices aren’t your choices.

            To put it another way, if you sold a kid a bike and he later crashes and dies despite the bike having no faults, are you responsible? Most would correctly identify that you are not responsible in that scenario, as the kid is responsible for what they did with the bike.

            • __Lost__@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 month ago

              In this case your entire argument about the election is moot. If I vote for a president, their actions are not mine, I am not going to Gaza to kill Palestinians. You can even go a step further, neither Harris nor trump is personally going to Gaza to kill people. The choice of killing Palestinians is up to the Israeli people who are doing the actual killing.

              • basmati@lemmus.org
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                1 month ago

                The opposite. If your vote for a president their actions are yours. You endorsed and aides them.

    • Scirocco@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      This is ridiculous. The most harm-reducing outcome for actual Gazans (not to mention everyone else) is if Harris wins.

      Because, either Harris will win, or Trump will win.

      There is NO other possibilty and no amount pseudo-philosophy word games will change that fact.

      • basmati@lemmus.org
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        1 month ago

        How is being genocided without restraint better than being genocided without restraint?

          • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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            10 days ago

            Vague references to restrictions in place is fun. I’m sure they were very disruptive. We’ve all been talking about how much the biden admin is holding netenyahu back right?

            I’m not arguing trump was not going to be awful, I’m arguing both sides would have justified genocide and murder one way or another. Open your eyes.