Wikileaks Takes Down the Head of Al Jazeera • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikileaks Takes Down the Head of Al Jazeera

#61

Post by CWuestefeld » Wed, Sep 21, 2011, 1:21 PM UTC

spiffage wrote: post #24

kiba wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who risk deaths to save 100 people is indeed more heroic than the person who save 2 people. Are you saying there's no difference between 1 or 100 people?

I'm saying that a person taking the same risk to save just 2 people is more heroic, even though peoples' intuition is the opposite. Risking yourself to save 2 people takes guts and a serious commitment to the greater good. Doing the same for 100 people takes guts, but is kind of a no-brainer.

I think you're on the verge of discovering that a utilitarian philosophy isn't the only way to look at the world. It's just so ingrained in us that it's hard to look beyond it.

Re: Wikileaks Takes Down the Head of Al Jazeera

#62

Post by bh42222 » Wed, Sep 21, 2011, 1:50 PM UTC

...the organization's radical, pro-transparency agenda

This is an unsettling turn of phrase. I wonder what percentage of the population agrees with it?

Re: Wikileaks Takes Down the Head of Al Jazeera

#63

Post by c0nsilience » Wed, Sep 21, 2011, 3:05 PM UTC

Would have been nice to link the original source instead of RWW http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/20/world/middleeast/...

Re: Wikileaks Takes Down the Head of Al Jazeera

#64

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 12:40 AM UTC

CWuestefeld wrote: post #61

spiffage wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that a person taking the same risk to save just 2 people is more heroic, even though peoples' intuition is the opposite. Risking yourself to save 2 people takes guts and a serious commitment to the greater good. Doing the same for 100 people takes guts, but is kind of a no-brainer.

I think you're on the verge of discovering that a utilitarian philosophy isn't the only way to look at the world. It's just so ingrained in us that it's hard to look beyond it.

Really? I find that utilitarianism is not at all the common way of looking at the world. It is trivial to come up with ethical examples that utilitarianism disagrees with the gut-instinct version.

Re: Wikileaks Takes Down the Head of Al Jazeera

#65

Post by CWuestefeld » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 4:03 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #64

CWuestefeld wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're on the verge of discovering that a utilitarian philosophy isn't the only way to look at the world. It's just so ingrained in us that it's hard to look beyond it.

Really? I find that utilitarianism is not at all the common way of looking at the world. It is trivial to come up with ethical examples that utilitarianism disagrees with the gut-instinct version.

It is trivial to come up with ethical examples that utilitarianism disagrees with the gut-instinct version.

That's true. But the typical formulation for utilitarianism -- "if a trolley is hurtling down the track, certain to kill 5 people ahead of it, is it OK to divert it onto a different track if that will result in killing a single person?" -- is very difficult to talk someone out of.

The idea that minimizing the number of deaths overrides any absolute prohibition on taking a person's life is pretty much impossible to overcome. Hence my conclusion that utilitarianism is, or has become, the default mode of reasoning.