Culling People

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Sy Borg
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Re: Culling People

Post by Sy Borg »

BG wrote:As I’ve also mentioned I specifically took the “do nothing” option off the table.
"Do nothing" is unrealistic. By contrast, if I was a betting woman, I would calmly put my house on "Do not enough to prevent major climate related incidents involving unprecedented fatalities and destruction".

The current method of culling is via budget - mostly via health, welfare and defence - and in the medium term education and environmental protection budgets impact on longevity of portions of populations.

Aside from "the worst of the worst" in prison, I am loathe to nominate others to be the ones to be culled unless they want to die (keeping the terminally ill alive when they want to be allowed to go is insane).

It's too easy to nominate others to die. I am not personally volunteering to check out and expect most others will feel the same. So we will muddle on, each clinging as best we can, until things start breaking beyond tolerance.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Culling People

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Greta -
Aside from "the worst of the worst" in prison, I am loathe to nominate others to be the ones to be culled unless they want to die (keeping the terminally ill alive when they want to be allowed to go is insane).
I never said it was an easy question to ask yourself. To call a hypothetical question “unrealistic” is something like answering a rhetorical question.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Culling People

Post by Sy Borg »

Many see hypotheticals to not be of much value unless they are possible. You could perhaps make an argument that the purpose is to determine who you value and who you don't, but ideally that would be the heading and first paragraph to ensure readers caught your angle.
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Re: Culling People

Post by Alias »

I'm confused about the objective of the exercise.
What is it meant to force people to think about?
Overpopulation and dwindling resources/habitable land surface/food and water are already known, as are many if not all the factors that have caused this state of affairs.
The question seems to be:
On what basis would you decide how to reduce the population?
My basis would be fairness and sustainability. It seems to me wrong to punish those who had no power to affect the situation, and counterproductive to retain those who would make it happen all over again.
But I seem to be wrong and 'not thought-out'.
Itseems every person who stated some principle upon which to base their decision, according to the OPP, is reading the question incorrectly.
Is there a correct way to read the question?
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Burning ghost
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Re: Culling People

Post by Burning ghost »

Greta -

I haven’t just come up with these off the top of my head. I have another one that I think I posted here a year or so ago regarding a slightly different version of the trolley problem. I’ll have a look for it.

Let put it more simply then:

1 billion people have to die. You have to pick you dies. Wealth cannot be a reason for your choice.

Arguing about how realistic a situation is is no more than avoidance - which I expected because people don’t like facing hard questions.

My experience in these kind of questions has been that either people call the question “silly”, “pointless”, “unrealistic”, they answer their own a amended version of the question (ignoring/missing elements of it), or turn the moral question into a purely logical proposition thus avoiding any real moral investigaton.
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Re: Culling People

Post by Alias »

Amended list:
Stage 1a. Let everyone who has already requested assisted suicide go ahead without delay;
b. approve all requests for abortion and/or sterilization.
Stage 2. Take all hopeless and comatose patients off life-support.
Stage 3.Kill the top two tiers of clergy, all denominations, and demobilize the rest.
Stage 4. Kill top three tiers of military, espionage and black ops organizations; demob all the rest.
Stage 5. Review crimes of long-term inmates; kill the ones I consider a danger to the public, let the rest go.
Stage 6. Kill top three levels of executive in the fossil fuel, weapons, precious metals, factory farming and chemical industries.
Stage 7. Kill the top two levels of executives in the news dissemination business.
That's probably enough, with maybe a bit to spare.
Make damn sure all who want it have full, free access to birth control and euthanasia.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Culling People

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Alias wrote: October 8th, 2018, 1:11 am Amended list:
Stage 1a. Let everyone who has already requested assisted suicide go ahead without delay;
b. approve all requests for abortion and/or sterilization.
Stage 2. Take all hopeless and comatose patients off life-support.
Stage 3.Kill the top two tiers of clergy, all denominations, and demobilize the rest.
Stage 4. Kill top three tiers of military, espionage and black ops organizations; demob all the rest.
Stage 5. Review crimes of long-term inmates; kill the ones I consider a danger to the public, let the rest go.
Stage 6. Kill top three levels of executive in the fossil fuel, weapons, precious metals, factory farming and chemical industries.
Stage 7. Kill the top two levels of executives in the news dissemination business.
That's probably enough, with maybe a bit to spare.
Make damn sure all who want it have full, free access to birth control and euthanasia.
Okay. Next step.

Same question again only ...

1) Nobody is either suicidal or pregnant.
2) Nobody is terminally ill or on life support.
3) There are no clergy.
4) There is no military.
5) No one has committed any crimes and the prisons are currently empty.
6) It is an anarcho-collective society both governmentally, commercially and industrially.
7) Once 1 billion are killed everything will be dandy and people can breed like rabbits.

If you find this too “unrealistic” then just think aliens! :D Maybe they set out this ultimatum and are betting among each other in some galatic casino.
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chewybrian
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Re: Culling People

Post by chewybrian »

Burning ghost wrote: October 8th, 2018, 2:01 am Okay. Next step.

Same question again only ...

1) Nobody is either suicidal or pregnant.
2) Nobody is terminally ill or on life support.
3) There are no clergy.
4) There is no military.
5) No one has committed any crimes and the prisons are currently empty.
6) It is an anarcho-collective society both governmentally, commercially and industrially.
7) Once 1 billion are killed everything will be dandy and people can breed like rabbits.

If you find this too “unrealistic” then just think aliens! :D Maybe they set out this ultimatum and are betting among each other in some galatic casino.
Well, I would first note that I think the question is wrong from the start in the sense that we never live in a zero sum game. People can change with changes in the environment and almost always win *IF* they are willing to cooperate to do it.

Playing along, though...

I declare evil any system of choosing people by "merit". I know someone like Dachshund would be drooling at the prospect of thinning the herd to his own tastes, and that tells you all you need to know about any such system. There but for the grace of God... So, my system would be drawing lots, with everyone being in the pool, then giving everyone drawn a chance to survive.

Those drawn would be dropped off in harsh winter environments with a few simple tools, as far as possible from each other, thereby having some small chance of surviving by their wits and will. Put tracking devices on everyone to see who is surviving and continue to draw lots and drop new people off until the number is reached. Anyone managing to build a boat and make their way back is removed from having their number drawn again. When the number is reached, we'll send everyone available to rescue all we can.
"If determinism holds, then past events have conspired to cause me to hold this view--it is out of my control. Either I am right about free will, or it is not my fault that I am wrong."
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Re: Culling People

Post by Alias »

Burning ghost wrote: October 8th, 2018, 2:01 am Okay. Next step.

Same question again only ...

1) Nobody is either suicidal or pregnant.
2) Nobody is terminally ill or on life support.
3) There are no clergy.
4) There is no military.
5) No one has committed any crimes and the prisons are currently empty.
6) It is an anarcho-collective society both governmentally, commercially and industrially.
7) Once 1 billion are killed everything will be dandy and people can breed like rabbits.
1) If nobody's suicidal, I've made a happy world.
If nobody's pregnant, they're not breeding like rabbits, who do it through pregnancy.
2) If nobody is terminally ill or on life support, it's either because I've already let them die and the newly sick haven't reached that stage yet, or because everyone who becomes ill or injured opts for euthanasia before they become terminal.
That's at least a little more realistic that 6.5 billion perfectly healthy people.
3) If there are no clergy, nobody's under moral duress to breed thoughtlessly.
4) If there is no military, we don't have to cull people the hard way anymore, and
we don't have to waste half our resources on weapons and personnel of mass destruction.
5,) If no one has committed any crimes, we can turn the prisons into hydroponic gardens.
And we'll save a whole lot more resources on police and judiciary, too.
6) If it is an anarcho-collective society that works as well as the above stipulations indicate, I can die happy in the knowledge that I've done my species and the world a service.
7)Once one billion people have been killed and all those conditions put in place, everything will be a little better than it is now, and people will need another thousand years to go really crazy again - and maybe by then, they'll find a cure.
I did my best with the assignment as given.
The rest isn't up to me.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Culling People

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Chewy -
I declare evil any system of choosing people by "merit".
Given that you’ve used parenthesis I am hoping this not as strange as it appears. Care to explain?
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Burning ghost
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Re: Culling People

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Alias -

The task is yours. I was merely providing step 2 in the process to encourage you to go further. Once you have an answer you’re happy with to the hypothetical lain out it is then worth cutting down the answers available to see where you can go with it.

If someone had decided to kill 1 billion men then my response would be to ask the same question again with the alteration of everyone being the same sex.
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Re: Culling People

Post by Alias »

Burning ghost wrote: October 8th, 2018, 10:40 am Alias -

The task is yours. I was merely providing step 2 in the process to encourage you to go further. Once you have an answer you’re happy with to the hypothetical lain out it is then worth cutting down the answers available to see where you can go with it.
There is nowhere to "go with it". The assigned task is complete. I don't sign on for another.

If your latest addendum was a change of parameters, it doesn't work, because your new conditions would have so radically altered the existing state of affairs as to make your original question inapplicable. If you change the football field to a tennis court, you can't expect us to play water polo.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Culling People

Post by Burning ghost »

Alias -

You don’t surprise me. Anyone else?
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Re: Culling People

Post by chewybrian »

Burning ghost wrote: October 8th, 2018, 10:35 am Chewy -
I declare evil any system of choosing people by "merit".
Given that you’ve used parenthesis I am hoping this not as strange as it appears. Care to explain?
Well, merit is subjective. Dachshund thinks intelligence is enough. What about people who are smart, but lazy or evil? Would you rather have them on your team than a nice and hard working person who is not that bright?

Attributes given by heredity don't have much merit in my book. Once again, there but for the grace of God... I would have less of a problem using behavior as a yardstick, but laws should never be retroactive if they are to be fair. How can you kill people for breaking rules that weren't rules until after they broke them? (Or attach new penalties for actions after the fact, such that offenders were never able to consider the consequences before acting?)
"If determinism holds, then past events have conspired to cause me to hold this view--it is out of my control. Either I am right about free will, or it is not my fault that I am wrong."
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Burning ghost
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Re: Culling People

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Chewy -

That is precisely the difficulty of the hypothetical question. It is quite a repugnant thing to put yourself through if you wish to take it seriously rather dismiss it out of hand as “unrealistic”.

Sausage Dog is merely throwing his view out there. I wouldn’t take it too seriously because anything said here is declared publicly.

I don’t really see how this question can be answered without resorting to some system of “merit”. I don’t myself view “intelligence” as being in any way a measure of someones character, yet I can see perfectly well how some people would if they make some other assumptions about human behaviour and morality - I find it a far more appealing measure than “wealth”, yet there is a correleation between IQ and wealth that is well documented.

As you can see what begins to happen here is you’ll find yourself ordering different human qualities. You may find one way to go about this repulsive just as someone may find your views repulsive. Personally I find it to be a very intriguing exercise for a number of reasons.
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