[quote]Legionary wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]Legionary wrote:
You have a single round of ammunition and the terrorist leader and his cohorts have automatic weapons.
[/quote]
That’s all I need to kill their leader.
Neither am I. Looks like we got ourselves a Mexican standoff.
The terrorist are deprived of their leader. Odds are, their organization will fall apart, as most such groups are highly dependent on a single charasmatic leader.
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]Legionary wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]Legionary wrote:
You have a single round of ammunition and the terrorist leader and his cohorts have automatic weapons.
[/quote]
That’s all I need to kill their leader.
Neither am I. Looks like we got ourselves a Mexican standoff.
The terrorist are deprived of their leader. Odds are, their organization will fall apart, as most such groups are highly dependent on a single charasmatic leader.[/quote]
Studies of terrorism suggest otherwise. Maybe if they were mercenaries working for a paycheck, but they’re ideologically devoted terrorists. Also, its much more likely that this is only a field commander, not the ideological leader of the organisation.
[quote]Legionary wrote:
Studies of terrorism suggest otherwise.
[/quote]
Bullshit. Each little click or group of terrorists (not an overall movement) is almost always driven by a single individual. Most people don’t have the brainpower or will power to lead that type of organization. And, yes, I’ve seen actual “studies” not internet fake studies like you quote, but real ones done by the USA on the effectiveness of decaptiation strikes.
More to the point, I’ve sat on the side of a mountain for two days pissing and shitting myself waiting for a clear shot on an identified leader, taken it, and then watched all the sheep come out, either to surender or die running away.
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]Legionary wrote:
Studies of terrorism suggest otherwise.
[/quote]
Bullshit. Each little click or group of terrorists (not an overall movement) is almost always driven by a single individual. Most people don’t have the brainpower or will power to lead that type of organization. And, yes, I’ve seen actual “studies” not internet fake studies like you quote, but real ones done by the USA on the effectiveness of decaptiation strikes.
More to the point, I’ve sat on the side of a mountain for two days pissing and shitting myself waiting for a clear shot on an identified leader, taken it, and then watched all the sheep come out, either to surender or die running away.[/quote]
I was referring to an overall movement, not an isolated cell. Fake internet ones? Hardly. Declassified and legitimate studies in International Security and Terrorism by the US Intelligence community? Yes. I’ll defer to your experience in that regard. We first have to define the terrorist in question. Are we discussing for example run of the mill Taliban or hardened Al Qaeda veterans in this case? It makes a huge difference.
[quote]Legionary wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]Legionary wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
OP, do you know who said this?
No fair using google. [/quote]
Friedrich Nietzsche, are you a fan? What is “good” depends on who your asking. I negotiated, at great personal risk to myself, the terms of execution. 1 life ended to spare the remaining 19. Is it “good”? that this person was sacrificed so all 20 would not have to die? Hardly. Is it the best course of action and morally justifiable? In my opinion, absolutely. If fact, if given the option, I would take the bullet myself. [/quote]
“In my opinion, absolutely.” Now this, my friends, is philosophy!
I met this guy yesterday whom I immediately disliked.You remind me a lot of him.
He talked and talked and talked. On and on and on, about anything and everything. Everything, that is, except the one thing you’d actually asked about.
You are proud of yourself for having googled Nietzsche, but you can’t google why my quote applies to your scenario, what lesson it teaches, or why it points to the motivation behind Sloth’s answer. It doesn’t matter though, because you don’t care. You are just here to parade around your most recently filched hat, as if it were your own.
For the third time, numbskull, I did not ask the question IS it good. The question was WHY is it good?
Do you understand the difference?
WHY is killing one person and saving 19 good?
WHY is one dying not good, but better than all of them dying?
WHY?
So far the closest you’ve come to providing an answer to this question is: “Because I think so.”
[/quote]
So what does that make you when you presume to know the character of a stranger and the depth of his education on an internet forum? I googled Friedrich Nietzsche? How did you come to that conclusion? I graduated Summa Cum Laude, but I must be a complete imbecile simply on the fact that we disagree. If anything falls outside your narrow minded codex it is wrong simply because your religious beliefs decree it to be so. [/quote]
There are clues.
That you can’t answer a very simple question that has been posed to you three times now may have something to do with my assessment of your erudition.
You’d think a Summa Cum Laude scholar such as yourself would neither deflect from nor repeatedly misunderstand a question that could have been posed by a four year old.
So I’m left with the conclusion that you are either a fraud or a fool. And since you’ve spent so much of our time telling us how noble you’d be when fighting terrorists, the only conclusion left to me was to assume you were feeble-minded.
You are welcome to prove me wrong.
[quote]Legionary wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]Legionary wrote:
You have a single round of ammunition and the terrorist leader and his cohorts have automatic weapons.
[/quote]
That’s all I need to kill their leader.
Neither am I. Looks like we got ourselves a Mexican standoff.
.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]Legionary wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]Legionary wrote:
You have a single round of ammunition and the terrorist leader and his cohorts have automatic weapons.
[/quote]
That’s all I need to kill their leader.
Neither am I. Looks like we got ourselves a Mexican standoff.
.[/quote]
Haha! Awesome response.
Ask for a night to think about it and then kill everyone in their sleep.
So I think those of you that choose to attempt to rewrite the exercise largely miss the point.
This story was first generated as a criticism to rule utilitarianism in that its showing to most of us the means matter and not solely the ends.
Rewriting your choices is a bit of weak attempt to escape having to answer what is supposed to be a moral problem. Is the end result 19 alive instead of 0 such a clear cut moral choice that the means don’t matter.
Besides the fact that most of the rewrites seem to be the work of noncreative dullards. If you are going to rewrite your choices why move to a glorious death of shooting the leader. Why not something like in truth you are the scout for a group of Navy Seals who are going to kill the terrorists so long as you give them enough time to set up or something else equally implausible. The idea behind most hypotheticals is a specific choice. In this case do the ends outweigh the means. If you change that choice you are not answering anything similar to the original hypothetical.
The Lequin story which I think Gaiman presents a bit better in part of American Gods, is a bit different I think. If a society is built on the suffering of others some chosen at random do the members of that society have an obligation to try to gradually change the society, end it, or walk away? Its easy to say end the suffering of one person chosen at random, but what if its a percent of a larger society?
groo said[quote]
So I think those of you that choose to attempt to rewrite the exercise largely miss the point.
[/quote]
I get the point. Artificial, absolute parametres designed to limit options and elicit one of two responses. In the real world we don’t know for sure what the outcome of virtually any action or inaction would be with certainty. An interesting exercise but one that has no relation to real world events.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
groo said[quote]
So I think those of you that choose to attempt to rewrite the exercise largely miss the point.
[/quote]
I get the point. Artificial, absolute parametres designed to limit options and elicit one of two responses. In the real world we don’t know for sure what the outcome of virtually any action or inaction would be with certainty. An interesting exercise but one that has no relation to real world events.[/quote]
That is incidentally one of the big problems of utilitarian ethics.
You really dont know what will happen.