Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)MD
Posts
8
Comments
662
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Copying my reply to someone else because much of it is relevant here too.

    I didn't mean to suggest that there was something without any of those drawbacks, so I'm sorry if I wasn't clear about that.

    I'm not going to propose a one size fits all solution.

    But I think people should consider the situations they are most likely to find themselves in, and make considered decisions.

    I don't think guns are likely to be the best choice very often.

    I'm not that interested in discussing what I do personally for safety, because every situation is unique.

  • I didn't mean to suggest that there was something without any of those drawbacks, so I'm sorry if I wasn't clear about that.

    I'm not going to propose a one size fits all solution.

    But I think people should consider the situations they are most likely to find themselves in, and make considered decisions.

    I don't think guns are likely to be the best choice very often.

  • There are lots of situations where fire arms aren't good for defense.

    They need to be aimed.

    They need to be loaded.

    They are not allowed in some places/They have specific transportation requirements which preclude them from bring brought to some places.

    They can kill/ grievously wound uninvolved people.

    They aren't effective for summoning help.

    Someone wielding one in self defense can be reasonably misidentified as an aggressor.

    Not every defence device has these deficiencies.

  • Can a business transact with an animal?

    If a crow puts a toonie in a vending machine, and manages to buy chips does it legally own the chips? Or can an agent of the business that runs the vending machine confiscate them and keep the money?

  • You're probably aware of this inherent contradiction by for the sake of any third parties reading:

    TotallynotJessica is advocating for virtue, contract, and rule based ethical paradigms based on the hypothesis that they will, in general, more effectively lead to outcomes preferred by utilitarianism.

    I think this contradiction is only important to people that are entrenched on one side or the other (or the other, or the other). For people that just want to understand how to make good decisions in their lives it's a bit of a moot point.

  • It took a while to type this out so the commenter above may have already responded but:

    I think their point is for example: in the scenario with Sally's father's nuclear bomb

    It's constructed to have people evaluate the extremities of their moral convictions. Some philosophers argue that it is never moral to lie or to break a promise. Some argue that it's never moral to torture a person. I reckon the thought experiment is designed to get people to consider whether torture is actually absolutely morally wrong.

    What I think the commenter above you was saying is: In reality, how could we become convinced this scenario was unfolding before us. What experiences could a person actually have that would give them adequate confidence in the story to actually decide that it was justified to torture Sally.

    Like if a person walked up to you on the street IN REAL LIFE and said:

    My name is Sally, and I promised my father not to tell anyone where he had buried an atomic bomb that will kill 1 million people when it explodes in half an hour, but I concede I would be convinced to break my promise through torture.

    Would you feel justified in torturing her? What if you were the chief of police? I hope you don't think so, because this is clearly a person having delusions related to some form of a psychotic episode.

    Even if she was telling the truth and you did succeed in torturing the information out of her, how quickly could you do it, and how quickly could you act on the information in a way that would save lives?

    Actual real world moral reasoning must account for people's skepticism of the premises of the thought experiment.

    If we're trying to construct some sort of useful ethical system, it has to accommodate the uncertainty humans have to navigate. This is probably why the classic trolley problem is so divisive. Some people are intuitively accounting for their uncertainty in the premise's stated 'known' outcomes.

  • I have a colleague that has a wife from the Philippines. They live in Canada but are building a house there. He said I should come visit, and I replied something about how my wife would love a tropical vacation. He replied:

    Bringing your wife on vacation to the Philippines is like bringing a lunchbag to a restaurant.

    ... ... ... cool.

  • Your explanation makes sense to me, an uninvolved spectator with no particular knowledge of generators.

    Maybe you direct the generator exhaust over the exterior of the tank? Would that be adequate heat?

    My thought was to recall that my 20# propane tank has some sort of safety valve integrated into it that will clamp outflow if there is too big a surge in flow. Flow needs to be 0 for a minute or so for it to reset. But that doesn't explain your experience with the larger tank.