

Ethics, Morals, and the Law: Where do you draw the line at what to develop? - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/10/wheres_the_line.php

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gibsonf1
I enjoyed the post until we hit Kant. This "imperative": "Act only according
to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a
universal law." is the kind of idea that makes it "rational" to go out and
kill all the Jews as the Nazi's so aptly demonstrated. They felt that the
elimination of Jews should become a universal law. Note that this is a very
different idea than: act only as you would want others to act towards you. It
is rather: act only in a way that you think all others should act. A very
different story, and a complete void as to the defining of "should".

Kant was not only confusing to himself and others, but his ideas were
"dangerous" to the extent that ideas can be when used to justify actions.

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amalcon
This is a misapplication of the categorical imperative. Of course, I suspect
that you knew that; it's only a naive viewpoint that would cause someone to
miss that.

The correct "universal law" to use in this case, would be "Eliminating people
who you find problematic." It would take a truly insane person to actually
want this as a universal law. Tying the rule to any specific group of people
makes it not universal.

Of course, if someone only understands "philosophy-lite," it becomes an easy
thing to mix up.

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fauigerzigerk
You say "the correct 'universal law' to use...". I think this shows very well
why Kant's imperative is so useless. It simply replaces judgement on the
original question with judgement on the right way to generalise it.

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olavk
It's a lot more useful than eg. "Don't be evil". No, it does not free you from
having to use your judgment. But no philosophy or religion will do that for
you.

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fauigerzigerk
Nothing frees us from judgement of course. But science is about giving us
tools to make better judgements. I don't see how Kant's imperative does that.

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brl
My personal ethics would prevent me from developing surveillance tools,
anything which is mostly military in nature, or any kind of video game which
requires a heavy investment of time.

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idea
What games do you consider to _require_ a heavy investment of time? A Korean
who was obsessed with Starcraft died after playing too long. Do you believe
Blizzard is somehow responsible?

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brl
I'm mostly thinking about the type of online role playing games which people
throw their lives away on, but I would consider Starcraft to be a borderline
case.

I do believe in general that people are responsible for the consequences they
create even if they could not have possibly predicted them. I certainly don't
think that Blizzard should be punished for the death of that man. I would only
hope that when they heard the news that as individuals they stopped and spent
a couple of quiet minutes asking themselves if what they are doing contributes
to improving human society or not.

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rms
Have you considered the alternative that for many people, online games like
World of Warcraft are truly better than real life?

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brl
If WoW is better than real life for so many people maybe that's because there
are some severe and imminent problems to solve in this world. The last thing
we need right now is for everybody to be drugged out on video games.

