On the Whole
Given some of my readers absolute reluctance to give any kind of summary judgment, boose asks a great question:
on the whole, is killing innocent people bad?
I can already hear Dan’s response:
(+) Innocent people take up resources that can harm the planet.
(-) Innocent people really have done nothing to justify being killed.
(+) I don’t like people.
Or Darwin’s response:
The question of whether its bad to kill innocent people is unsatisfactory. Therefore I’m not going to answer other than to say I’m not an expert in the empirical effects of killing innocent people.
Jamie’s response:
Boose you are a simple minded, bigot and a racist.
And how can i forget Bettina? Her response:
Isn’t asking this question again redundant? Steve was clearly proven wrong about this question and he needs to post about the things I find interesting.
By the way my response is yes. On the whole, killing innocent people is bad.
October 15th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
You really need to stop crying about me calling you a biggot and a racist. I gave you MW’s definitions of the words, matched them to your statements and yet never heard you defend yourself. Your only defense has been to whine.
October 15th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
What if the innocent people are dying of a disease that can’t be cured and they wish to die?
This inflexible one way or another steve world does not allow for choice when it goes against the “on the whole.”
October 15th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
“On the whole, killing innocent people is bad.” Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation. You are at war with an opposing nation, and you are winning the war but bringing it to a conclusion could cost millions of lives. You have a weapon that is extremely powerful but too inaccurate to have a great effect on military targets. However, you could opt to kill innocent people with it, which would bring the war to a conclusion faster and likely with dramatically fewer deaths, both military and civilian. Moreover, your enemy has an advanced biological weapons program and little left to lose, so simply attempting to besiege them and wait for them to starve would be risky. Would you still argue that killing innocent people is -on the whole- bad?
Nuance can make a big difference.
October 15th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Steve,
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why would you think any of us would respond that way? We haven’t even said anything in this post, how could you possibly make any type of guess about what our positions might be?
It’s almost as if your knowledge of our positions can be generalized from one post to another. But obviously that’s not how these comment systems work. So I’m confused.
October 18th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
So y’all aren’t going to answer a simple question. Unsurprising.
October 18th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Why should we answer in simplistic terms? Almost everyone’s response has been along the lines of saying that some things require situational thinking that can’t be captured in a simple yes or no argument. It is you that insist that things have to be black or white.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:13 am
I already suggested an answer to your question. Variable depending on what you would refer to as ‘nuance’ (I would prefer to call it circumstance, but I think we are referring to the same thing).
You are the one who isn’t answering my question.