Comment by boxed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boxed | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> but you cannot ever justify it as logically consistent

I don't understand where "justify" came from. It WAS logically consistent. But that's 100% irrelevant. Logic based on faulty assumptions is worthless, this is just "garbage in, garbage out". There is absolutely no morals to be had from garbage assumptions.

> Genocide is always wrong.

I don't think that's correct. Now, it has always been wrong HISTORICALLY, but saying that it is logically impossible to even imagine a science fiction scenario where it's the lesser evil just means you have a lack of imagination.

> but genocide is definitely always wrong, and we can say that he was a morally broken person because of it.

Again I disagree. The immorality of genocide flows downstream from my morals, it's not an axiom. I don't like the long-list-of-axioms family of morality. It doesn't scale, and it can't handle future situations. We need something much more stable than a long list of past mistakes. We need to understand what caused those mistakes, but even more important we need clear and practical rules about how to avoid that entire class of mistakes, including future similar mistakes that we have not made yet.

I forgot about this part of your comment, and it's important:

> We need to understand what caused those mistakes, but even more important we need clear and practical rules about how to avoid that entire class of mistakes, including future similar mistakes that we have not made yet

Fully agreed! I think it's worth debating what led Hitler down this path, and how he could convince people of its righteousness. To be clear, I'm not arguing against debating this. It's important, like you said, to get rid of whole classes of colossal mistakes (another example would be: "in order to prevent genocide, we need to commit genocide first!" -- the root problem is still genocide). Understanding dictators, torturers, flawed political systems is always important and valid.

What I'm arguing, plain and simple, is that whenever anyone decides genocide is the solution, that is in itself a moral failure and a horrific mistake, regardless of any other considerations. There may be other mistakes (like waging war against the Soviet Union, or failing to consider the industrial might of the USA, or even failing to understand the logistics of protracted war), but even without those mistakes, genocide was still an a priori moral failure.

> It WAS logically consistent. But that's 100% irrelevant. Logic based on faulty assumptions is worthless, this is just "garbage in, garbage out". There is absolutely no morals to be had from garbage assumptions.

Hard disagree. That's a utilitarian mindset. Morals is relevant regardless of whether the assumptions are faulty.

Even if Hitler had been right, and genociding Jews and Slavs truly was what would bring Germany up, even then, he would have been morally wrong.

You're begging the question here: the ends definitely do NOT justify the means in the case of genocide. That's it. Hitler was a morally bankrupt man not because of his flawed assumptions (we do agree they were flawed) but because he decided genocide was acceptable. Nothing else matters. Genocide is always wrong.

> The immorality of genocide flows downstream from my morals, it's not an axiom

Inasmuch as we are humans and there's no such thing as objective fact, but you're saying is trivially true but also too abstract.

For humans, genocide of other humans is always wrong. Don't sci-fi me, don't insult my intelligence. I have no failure of imagination: there is simply no future scenario where genocide or rape is acceptable, ever.

Genocide is always wrong. Survival at all costs -- say, by murdering children -- is unacceptable. No future scifi scenario you can think of will make it acceptable. It's ok to lose -- not you, humanity I mean -- if we reach such a dead-end where the only possible "solution" is genocide. It's ok to say "we cannot solve this problem, we cannot follow this abhorrent path".

"Your morals, axioms, etc": as I said, I've little patience for moral relativism as an argument for this kind of debates.

> Hard disagree. That's a utilitarian mindset.

You misunderstood. I'm just saying that you cannot make good conclusions from bad assumptions. That's not a utilitarian mindset, that's just basic logic.

> Morals is relevant regardless of whether the assumptions are faulty.

That makes no sense. If your underlying beliefs are wrong you will commit atrocities. If you truly believe that a baby that grows up to be a Christian (or whatever) will be tortured in hell for all eternity, then it is an infinite good to kill that baby before that happens. This is what happens with bad assumptions. This isn't a hypothetical example btw, this is what real people believe TODAY.

> Inasmuch as we are humans and there's no such thing as objective fact,

Well that's just false.

> you're saying is trivially true but also too abstract.

Too abstract... for what?

> Don't sci-fi me, don't insult my intelligence.

That makes no sense. You are now using hysterical and emotional language because you are failing to be convincing with logic. That's not me insulting your intelligence, that's YOU insulting your own intelligence.

> I've little patience for moral relativism as an argument for this kind of debates.

There we agree 100%. I'm not arguing moral relativism at all. In fact quite the opposite. YOU argued moral relativism above with "no such thing as objective fact".

> if we reach such a dead-end where the only possible "solution" is genocide. It's ok to say "we cannot solve this problem, we cannot follow this abhorrent path".

That makes no logical sense. "Let all humans die, because we cannot follow this abhorrent path" is to trade genocide for extinction. Which is the same as trading 1 genocide against ALL genocides at the same time.

This is the point of thought experiments: to really test your logic to the extreme and see if it still makes sense. Your axiomatic approach does not survive this test, as you clearly demonstrate.

> You misunderstood. I'm just saying that you cannot make good conclusions from bad assumptions. That's not a utilitarian mindset, that's just basic logic.

No, I understood you just fine. What you're saying is a form of the utilitarian view, "if the assumptions were good..." (or "this was bad because the assumptions were bad"), and I'm contradicting you: the assumptions don't matter, because genocide is always wrong. Argue all you want about logic, but genocide is always wrong.

> That makes no sense

[blah blah]

> That makes no logical sense. "Let all humans die, because we cannot follow this abhorrent path" is to trade genocide for extinction. Which is the same as trading 1 genocide against ALL genocides at the same time.

Extinction is not the same as genocide. The rest of your argument falls apart, but it was never all that solid or logical to begin with.

Best not proceed down this road: I find your attempts at "logic" silly, and this will inevitably devolve into a flamewar (I'm already witnessing some of your debate tactics, and I can't say I'm impressed).

Let's stop here.

Your killing babies point demonstrates a common error with this kind of debate: there are a ton of steps you could take to stop a baby growing up Christian before you jump straight to killing it. A lot of them are also probably abhorrent like but might be better than killing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com