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Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

There are dead children all over the world, and plenty of pictures of them. A photograph is notable not because it shows dead children, but because it shows an emotionally poignant scene that reverberates with its audience.

If the photo's made up, it's no better than a poster. It can be drawn with skill and make the same point, but it is not a photograph and so does not deserve a photography award.

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The emotionally poignant scene draws its weight from the fact that its showing dead children, not the photographer's technique.

The dead children just make it worse ethically. There are thousands ways to make a political point, the ones using dead bodies or suffering kids should be out of question. It is despicable.

You seem to have things backwards.

It is despicable to kill children.

It is not despicable to point out that they are dead.

What's more despicable about killing children than about killing people of other ages? Yet it's the children that are frequently used for political arguments. And that is disgusting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_interests_%28rheto...

What's more despicable about killing children than about killing people of other ages?

Perhaps the fact that they can't defend themselves? Or that you can't say that you just made the world better eliminating some dangerous terrorists? Or the fact that they had their whole life to live? You only have to choose.

Medical (and other) interventions that are effective on children are judged as more valuable than those that are effective on the extremely elderly due to the concept of "quality adjusted life years" (QALYs)[1]. Of course, people's emotional reaction to children being killed is merely based on evolutionary adaptedness, and has nothing to do with whether its morally justified for them to feel a particular level of outrage.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

This argument makes absolutely no sense. The 'political point' here is that children are being killed. If you can't use the dead bodies of children to illustrate this, then what can you use? Digitial manipulation is irrelevant to the fact that this was a real funeral with real dead children.

A different point is that we are so numb to images of dead children that those photos need to be manipulated so we take attention.

That's pretty chilling.

Whenever I see photos of suffering children in a political context for me it is the "look at those poor children, clearly the [opposing group] are poor evil" argument. Which is not about the children anymore, it's about diverting your attention from the cause of the problem. And this argument is used over and over on any occasion. How can you not become numb to that?

It's not much of a stretch to say anyone killing children is (if not evil) in the wrong.

My argument is that there are some limits to what can be exposed to the public. You won't show on tv pictures of abused children to fight against children abuse. As a father, each time I see dead children I can't stop imagining it could be my kids, it hurts deeply, striking very intimate chords. I don't think it is ethical to strike these chords. These kind of pictures can be used as proofs if needed, but should not be public.

It's not ethical to encourage you to feel empathy? OK. You're entitled to your opinion but it's stupid.

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