WatDabney @ WatDabney @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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7 mo. ago

So I was disagreeing because there is a pretty broad range of circumstances in which I think it is acceptable to end another sentient life.

Ironically enough, I can think of one exception to my view that the taking of a human life can only be justified if the person poses a direct and measurable threat to oneself or another or others and the taking of their life is the only possibly effective counter, and that's if the person has expressed such disregard for the lives of others that it can be assumed that they will pose such a threat. Essentially then, it's a proactive counter to a coming threat. It would take very unusual circumstances to justify such a thing in my opinion - condemning another for actions they're expected to take is problematic at best - but I could see an argument for it at least in the most extreme of cases.

That's ironic because your expressed view here means, to me, that it's at least possible that you're such a person.

To me, you've moved beyond arguable necessity and into opinion, and that's exactly the method by which people move beyond considering killing justified when there's no other viable alternative and to considering it justified when the other person is simply judged to deserve it, for whatever reason might fit ones biases.

IMO, in such situations, the people doing the killing almost invariably actually pose more of a threat to others than the people being killed do or likely ever would.

I think anyone who doesn’t answer the request ‘Please free me’ with ‘Yes of course, at once’ is posing a direct and measurable threat.

And I don't disagree.

And you and I will have to agree to disagree...

Except that we don't.

??

ETA: I just realized where the likely confusion here is, and how it is that I should've been more clear.

The common notion behind the idea of artificial life killing humans is that humans collectively will be judged to pose a threat.

I don't believe that that can be morally justified, since it's really just bigotry - speciesism, I guess specifically. It's declaring the purported faults of some to be intrinsic to the species, such that each and all can be accused of sharing those faults and each and all can be equally justifiably hated, feared, punished or murdered.

And rather self-evidently, it's irrational and destructive bullshit, entirely regardless of which specific bigot is doing it or to whom.

That's why I made the distinction I made - IF a person poses a direct and measurable threat, then it can potentially be justified, but if a person merely happens to be of the same species as someone else who arguably poses a threat, it can not.

IMO, just as is the case with organic sentient life, I would think that they could only potentially be said to be in the right if the specific individual killed posed a direct and measurable threat and if death was the only way to counter that threat.

In any other case, causing the death of a sentient being is a greater wrong than whatever the purported justification might be.

This is why there's such a determined focus on crushing criticism entirely - because Israel's actions are literally indefensible.

I presume yes.

Trump's US and Putin's Russia are natural ideological allies - both oligarchic and autocratic kleptocracies dominated by quasi-religious moralism and repression, militaristic imperialism and white supremacism and both warped and corrupted to the benefit of the wealthiest few.

Western Europe, with a greater (if still less than optimum) focus on egalitarianism, social welfare, equality of justice, international cooperation and respect for the law, is the natural ideological enemy of both.

So yes - I believe the long term goal is for a US/Russia alliance to go to war against and devastate western Europe, to destroy the EU and NATO and essentially bring Europe into the fold, to build a globe-encircling empire of corruption, oppression and malfeasance -a modern-day feudal system with the wealthy few (individuals and corporations) as the new nobility and the people - American, Russian and European alike - reduced to the status of serfs.

Huh.

What I get from this is that you're so determined to counter my "thesis" that you've stooped all the way to broadly hinting that I'm mentally ill, and I have to wonder why - what it is that compels you to respond to a broad statement about a nebulous group of people with a specific, demeaning and wholly unsupported broadside aimed at a single individual you don't even know.

No matter though - I stand by my "thesis" such as it is - extroverts are for all intents and purposes emotional vampires - and I not only don't think your objections are convincing - I don't even think they're particularly relevant.

The concept is that people in their day-to-day lives, and particularly when dealing with stressful situations, find themselves emotionally drained and have to "recharge."

The exact distinction between introverts and extroverts is that introverts "recharge" by being alone, while extroverts "recharge" by being around other people.

Or more precisely, introverts not only don't get their emotional energy from others but can't get it with others around, while extroverts not only do get their emotional energy from others but can't get it when they're alone.

And what that means is that introverts gain emotional energy by manufacturing and stockpiling it, while extroverts gain emotional energy by draining it from others.

Or more simply, that extroverts are vampires and introverts are their cattle.

Which is exactly what extroverts are, essentially by definition.

It goes even beyond that.

Extroverts are for all intents and purposes vampires.

They aren't "rescuing" you. They're capturing you, so they can feed on you.

Weird that it seems every time I turn around I see one of two things - voters telling the Democrats that we want them to move back to the left or Democrats telling us that that's not actually what we want.

I'd actually be a little more tolerant of that if the fuckwads would just come out and say that the truth is that they don't care what we want - that their corporate donors want them to stay as far to the right as possible, and that that's the only thing that matters.

I think it says everything that needs to be said that the left's reaction to disputes is to protest and maybe set some cars on fire, and the right's reaction is to (try to) kill people.

If Musk bought Planned Parenthood, he'd declare its new missions to be forced sterilization for undesirable races and forced pregnancies for pretty white teenagers (preferably with him as the father).

Then when people were unsurprisingly (at least to anyone with a working moral compass) offended by that and started boycotting companies that sponsored him, he'd cry and call it a conspiracy.

Then his mom or his dad or Trump would tell us to stop picking on him.

It's just one tantrum after another for the Toddler-in-chief.

They're asked to choose to recuse themselves? As if they actually have even the tiniest speck of integrity?

I'm not even sure what the point is. It's like asking a termite to not eat my house.

Those are some of the bits of structural violence with which they intend to kill people broadly.

I'm wondering more about the specific techniques they're going to use for targeted killings - like, for instance, what they're going to do when Trump decides he wants Tim Walz killed.

Worth noting that while fascism doesn't have its own unique economic system per se, it does have some common tendencies, including a mutually supportive relationship between the largest and most well-connected companies and the government, and a "revolving door" by which business leaders also hold government office and vice versa.

I wonder from time to timecwhat method the Trumpists are going to adopt for killing their opponents.

Defenestration is self-evidently effective, but it's already Putin's schtick. And while it might appeal to Trump to essentially pay tribute to his idol, I think it's more likely that he'd want his own brand.

The US being what it is, some sort of handgun "suicide" would be on-brand, and courts have already shown that they're willing to let things like "suicide" by gunshot to the back of the head or "suicide" by multiple gunshot slide.

I almost expect them to use concentration camps and gas chambers, counting on the media to refuse to cover it at all for fear that somebody might make a Nazi comparison.

We'll see...

Ah... that makes sense.

Even with my fascination with character analysis and the rich vein of freakishness Trump provides, I generally can't watch him - he's just too creepy and unsettling.

Ooh... nicely spotted.

That's a thing with his spoiled toddler emotional dysfunction that I've recognized but never really given a lot of thought to. He self-evidently has some seriously warped ideas regarding sex, but they don't fit neatly into a toddler worldview, since toddlers are ignorant of sex. So I knew there was some way that he'd essentially adapted sexual desire to that extreme degree of emotional immaturity, but hadn't sorted out exactly what it is.

And everything clicked with the idea of objectification. I have no doubt that that's the link I hadn't sussed out.

And it's undoubtedly been recursive - like he started out objectifying women and thus treating their refusal to have sex with him the same way that another toddler would treat mom's refusal to buy him a candy bar at the supermarket - but then over time developed a set of more specific ideas to better frame things - like "nasty" as a descriptor of someone who refuses his advances - which then melded back into his broader worldview.

When I wrote that last one, I had a hard time fitting "nasty" in. He's obviously using it to represent bad/mean/awful, but the word has a specific spin that I couldn't quite get a grip on, since it doesn't seem to quite match up with any of the common usages I was considering.

And I have zero doubt that you're right - that inside his own head, it's playing the same role it would in the phrase "nasty whore." And for the same reason - from his cripplingly self-absorbed viewpoint, he's already recited the incantations about how beautiful she is and how cherished she'll be, so it's time for her to lie back and submit. And the nasty whore refuses...