With this reasoning, whether or not you actually have a hidden FS is not relevant, as it's unprovable. So you will be tortured with no end anyway just to make sure that there is no hidden FS. Because that you have a hidden FS will be the assumption of anyone thinking you are hiding something.
Let pigs eat the central nervous system and nerves of their own race, you'll see that they are subject to ESB and prions. Cannibalism is not healthy for mammals.
The answer to that seems to be so simple. Each of the 1Mio rich people gives just less than 1Mioth of his property/values to the one poor soul, and all ends up with utopia and restores fairness - at least with regard to property. There may still remain unfairness regarding physical and mental integrity, as well as regarding freedom. The two former ones are difficult to handle/solve.
Omelia is not a problem to be solved, its a thought experiment with predefined rules for how it operates. In order for the million people to live in utopia, there MUST be a person sacrificed to suffer utterly. These facts cannot be changed. The questions then arise about the ethics and morality of this society.
But it can't be a thought experiment about humans since humans would not tolerate the outcome in the first place. Humans are moral animals who are compelled to act on their morality. One aspect of morality is fairness. Another is compassion. See Johnathon Haidt's work on this.
As soon as you realize that Omelia could not obtain if it involved humans, it becomes a lot less interesting.
It's hyperbole, but humans do tolerate a similar outcome all the time. Our modern technological civilization is in many ways built on suffering. Migrant workers suffer to pick our vegetables and clean our homes, child slaves suffer to build our electronics and mine rare earth minerals. We buy goods from companies like Amazon knowing how they treat their employees. Most of us don't care as long as we get our goods on time. People have rationalized far greater evils (chattel slavery, manifest destiny, imperialism and colonization), incorporated them into their moral framework, and turned the cognitive dissonance into virtue. Those people simply choose their lot in life, they're lazy and indigent, God made them less than us, that's just the price of progress.
Omelas is just the inherent hypocrisy of human morality and the banality of evil presented as reductio ad absurdum. If it's possible to accept the suffering of millions for ones' own benefit - as it clearly and demonstrably is - for the sake of our imperfect modern world, surely it would be even easier to accept the suffering of only one scapegoat, for the sake of utopia? The truth is, most people would simply learn to live with it.
People using Amazon is not evidence that humans don't care about the suffering of others. At the other extreme, neither was colonialism.
In the first case, what you're looking at is unawareness, stiff competition for limited attention and care budgets, and a diversity of opinion with respect to the evaluation of tradeoffs for this specific, micro-topic. People who labor in sweatshops that provide goods for Amazon want those jobs because its better than the alternative. They don't want those conditions, but that's a problem that is not going to be fixed tomorrow, whereas they have to worry a lot about their tomorrow. People making decisions within that complex matrix of forces is not evidence that Amazon buyers don't care about other people. It's evidence that the world is complex and that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.
Colonialism and or conquering and enslaving was how the world was run by all parties everywhere since the beginning of time. Even Ghengis Khan was talked out of genociding the Chinese by someone who admired Chinese society and suggested that he would be better off taxing the skilled artisans of China instead of genociding them, as he usually did to any society that defied him.
Are you saying that throughout all historical time , there were no moral people until the current crop of modern leftists ? Or that morality was the sole possession of a tiny vanguard ? If so, then you're swimming against a strong current and I wonder what it would take, and what you'd be willing to do, in order to perpetually force that current to flow in the other direction.
>People using Amazon is not evidence that humans don't care about the suffering of others.
Yes it is. People don't care enough to not use Amazon - suffering is simply priced into the market and people are fine with that.
>At the other extreme, neither was colonialism.
It very much is. Colonialism was built on slavery and genocide, and the colonizers cared very little for the suffering of the colonized.
>Colonialism and or conquering and enslaving was how the world was run by all parties everywhere since the beginning of time.
"That's just how the world works and has always worked and it's absurd to take issue with it" is only one of many excuses people use to reconcile their morality with the amount of suffering they benefit from. No point even thinking about it if it's simply the law of nature.
>Are you saying that throughout all historical time , there were no moral people until the current crop of modern leftists ?
Now we're at the part of the comment where you purposely misconstrue my comment and make it into some weird anti-leftist rant.
No, I didn't say that, and when did I even mention anything about modern partisan politics? Of course diverting from the topic with strawman arguments means you don't have to take the topic seriously, which is another coping mechanism.
>If so, then you're swimming against a strong current and I wonder what it would take, and what you'd be willing to do, in order to perpetually force that current to flow in the other direction.
Ooh. "I wonder what you'd be willing to do?" That's a nice turnabout. The only true evil is pointing out evil. I bet you also like to say the only true racists are the black people who keep complaining about racism. Turning me into the enemy, nothing but a windmill to be tilted at, is yet another coping mechanism.
Thank you. I couldn't have asked for a better demonstration of my point. Not only would you not leave Omelas, you don't even think there's anything wrong with Omelas. Rather you'd be the one spreading FUD about anyone who does leave.
"Yes it is. People don't care enough to not use Amazon - suffering is simply priced into the market and people are fine with that."
So you say about them. Thinking you have the power to pass moral judgment on everyone else's internal processes, reasoning and decisions about where to place their attention and care is an error.
"That's just how the world works and has always worked and it's absurd to take issue with it" is only one of many excuses people use to reconcile their morality with the amount of suffering they benefit from. No point even thinking about it if it's simply the law of nature."
Never said it or implied it. Since you can't attack the fact, you attack the speaker. The fact remains, the universal existence of slavery does not imply most people in history were amoral. People buying from Amazon doesn't mean they are uncaring. Your thoughts and opinions don't determine facts about people you've never met. Sorry but you're displaying an ugly self indulgent narcissism in this post. Do better.
I think that each may book should at least have all problem solutions at least, and most problem resolutions as well, leaving some room problem to be solved without giving the resolution, for training. Anything short of that can only be used as a reference book by a teacher, because teachers need to confirm that the resolution is indeed complete and right. Without that, as a engineering and economics student (decades ago), my resolutions would often have been incomplete and lack some details and specific cases.
And why use Typst when you should be using Org-mode?
Jokes aside, those formats all have their pros and cons. For me at least, Typst is not yet a usable alternative for neither academic publishing nor serious typesetting in general.
But I love the MarkDown-like syntax with TeX-like equation support and fast compile times, and am considering it for a mathy personal knowledge base. Similarly to how I’ve been using tools like Org-mode and Obsidian over the past few years.
In a few years it might be usable for professional use given how fast it’s evolving, but academia is conservative and I’d expect more journals to support LaTeX3 if it’s ever released.
There is a whole set of interlocking organizations supporting the TeX ecosystem, such that no one can claim ownership of it. It truly is owned by its community. Typst, with its pay-for-play online offerings, keeps a tight grip around the open-source project of Typst. I don't see how academia ever switches from its own albeit complex ecosystem, to a corporate-owned project.
> I don't want to write a book. If I did I'd use LaTeX before RST.
You'd want to use Typst, not LaTeX. I'm rewriting my CV with it, it's fantastic. I can now finally put the CV contents in a JSON, and generate the PDF programmatically, with lots of computed values by my own algorithms, the layout is simple, nothing stands in the way, nothing feels out of its place. And compilation is so fast... Really, forget LaTeX, embrace the 2020s.
