Wednesday 30 April 2014

Moral dilemmas

This is a famous situation, probably investigated since the time of Greek philosophers. What if you are in government, and are in a position to sacrifice people right now for a possible profit in the future? What should they do?

In the 40s Churchill and others knew about the concentration camps, but made the decision if they tried to liberate them then Hitler would discover they'd broken his code and would weaken the war effort, so they allowed millions to die in case they saved even more in the future. The formula is fairly simple, as if you know exactly what will happen by your current actions you must then decide if certain deaths or losses are worth the chance of saving possibly more in the future, also bearing in mind it is impossible to see the future outside a linear system.

Run things ahead to the 1990s, with the Kyoto Protocol. This and Agenda 21 have led to many thousands of deaths, from starvation in the third world where land grabs for biofuels have put many farmers out of business and caused whole villages to starve, and poor people dying of cold every winter, 3,000 in Britain and many more in hospital from raising energy bills. All this is supposed to prevent possible global warming in around 2100 (when we'll never be here to know anyway), as well as spending trillions worldwide which could have been spent on saving lives and related project such as providing clean water in the third world and clearing the swamps of malaria, but has now been diverted to wind turbines (which have standbys working in parallel permanently so add no new power themselves as each watt is cancelled by the wasted one provided by the standby and vice versa) and subsidies for similar projects worldwide despite the temperature having barely risen after a 50% rise in CO2.

People do not either learn from history, study simple philosophy, or if they do, do not care about its messages as their own psychopathic aims are stronger than the knowledge of benefitting the most people overall using the principle of utilitarianism. Where you know the consequences in a linear system then sacrifices can be made, and some laws recognise this, so various times plane crash survivors have killed and eaten others as otherwise none may survive and this way it guaranteed the most people would last as long as possible in case they were found in the future, rather than all dying sooner if they did not. That is one of the only examples where such an action could be justified as you know by halving the numbers and eating the remainder the total lifespan will be increased. Otherwise you are almost certainly colluding in murder and other atrocities.

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