[hexer292]

> You can save thousands of people, but murdering someone still should mean a life sentence.

I've struggled with this point of view since my early teens, and possibly even earlier. There is no amount of good one can do to compensate for even the slightest misdeed.

As much as I may agree, however, it's probably the most damaging and destructive moral framework you can possibly have, because it just consumes anything positive.

[selcuka]

> I've struggled with this point of view

Because it is much easier for people to universally accept a system where good or neutral deeds are expected by default, and misdeeds are punished.

It is very difficult to construct an alternative system that humans could internalise. Where would you draw the line? What about saving 50 people, and then killing 49? Should they cancel each other, too?

[DrScientist]

> What about saving 50 people, and then killing 49? Should they cancel each other, too?

Only if they were linked - you blew up a plane that was about to be flown into a building for example.

That's completely different from one day taking over a plane and landing it safely because the pilot was out of action, and the next day shooting down a plane for fun.

You can't save up to murder your wife by giving to the homeless.

[listenallyall]

Where are you drawing the line? It's relatively easy to have a black & white ideological framework regarding murder - but what about lesser crimes, like beating someone up and causing serious, but not life-threatening injuries? What about being a witness to a crime but never reporting it? Does the motivation ever come into play? Can people who commit a crime never "redeem" themselves by performing positive deeds going forward? Isn't that the point of rehabilitation?

[hexer292]

There is no line. Killing one person while saving a thousand is just as bad as killing one person.

[skeeter2020]

forget about murder, you make a terrible comment or single mistake in your young adulthood and you are done for ever. Kids are not allowed to make mistakes anymore.

[embedding-shape]

That's not true though, no one "Has their life ruined forever" because of one off-hand comment. Eventually, social media moves on, and people stop haunting you, if that's what you're encountering.

Great way of avoiding 99% of the harm with that, is literally getting off social media, if that ever happens to you. Most people around you in real-life won't know about it, nor recognize you, or anything else, unless you had a pattern of bad behavior for a longer period of time.

But you can still make mistakes, even online, and eventually people forget about it.

[empthought]

This sounds more like scrupulosity than a moral framework.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrupulosity

[hexer292]

People have always told me I'm too hard on myself.

Then again, I've made mistakes to know I wasn't hard enough on myself.

If you're worried about causing a negative effect on someone and then you do, the solution isn't to not worry about that.

[Nursie]

> I've struggled with this point of view since my early teens, and possibly even earlier. There is no amount of good one can do to compensate for even the slightest misdeed.

I think there's a hole in the thought somewhere.

If you save thousands of people and murder one, you should serve time for that murder, but you should still be appreciated for your other work.

The error is thinking of actions and life like a karmic account balance, even though it's an appealing metaphor, people are complex beings and seeing them reductively as good or bad is probably wrong.

Scott Adams was an asshat in later life. I don't know all the controversy he stirred because I drifted away from paying attention to him years ago. He gave me a lot of laughs, he had some great, fun insights into office life, he has some weird pseudo-scientific ideas in his books, and then he devolved into a bit of a dick. Maybe a lot of a dick. His is a life that touched mine, that I appreciate in some ways and am sad for in others.

Bye Scott, thanks for all the laughs, thanks for nurturing my cynicism, but it's a shame about what happened with you after twitter came along.

[fwip]

Good does not cancel out bad, but bad does not automatically outweigh all good.

[hexer292]

How would you compare the two? I think no matter what the good was, you're still left with "yeah, but x happened".

[worthless-trash]

In the eyes of the law, it clearly does.

[_carbyau_]

> because it just consumes anything positive.

I was perhaps not as clear as I'd wish. The next dot point after you quoted me was meant to convey that equally, the good actions cannot be cancelled/consumed by bad ones.

Life is a complex thing.

[unwise-exe]

I intend to do this very bad thing. How much karma do I need to accrue in advance, so that I don't go into the red from doing it?

[hexer292]

I guess my point is you will always be bad as a result of doing this very bad thing, no amount of karma can counter it.

[ztjio]

This is pure nonsense. The moral distance between a good deed and the level of bad deed that receives a meaningful penalty, socially (e.g. felonies) is enormous and there is plenty of fungibility of good vs. bad actions in that space.

That said, it is strange to even consider being good, which is generally a rather easy thing to be, to be some kind of task you should be paid for even virtually. Being basically good is the trivial cost to avoid becoming anti-social. Why should a social group even tolerate you otherwise? With that in mind, as mentioned before, I think you'll find that social groups are highly tolerant of many misdeeds.

[hexer292]

Moral distance is an interesting concept, because it implies two acts are comparable at some level.

If someone cured cancer, do you think they couldn't be tried for murder?

[raxxorraxor]

Being a purely good being is impossible for any human and this fact should be clear by reading entry level literature by those that put a few more thoughts into it. Babies have narcissistic tendencies until they develop morality. But even in the case of ethics in contrast to personal morals there is ample literature that a purely reasonable and logical approach to ethics is insufficient.

Demanding people being pure and good, denying their egoistical sides can lead to quite terrible outcomes. The art is to deal with these character sides as well.

I don't have a huge group of friends but all of them have flaws like me. If you can forgive yourself, people start to believe that you can forgive others too and maybe you would make friends. Generally people that only point the finger at the smallest flaws are called self-righteous for a reason. And no, they often do not have many friends.

[21asdffdsa12]

? What strange moral posturing is this? Of course there is good that can exists in parallel to bad deeds. Invent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process fertilizer that feeds the planet and your contributions to poison gas are forgotten. Not forgiven.

But science and progress are decoupled from whatever a person contributes. And even a disgusting person, while it should be kept from power, should be capable to contribute to science and progress. Even a insane nazi can feed half africa, while the most saint like person, may give humanity nothing.

The value society assigns is not the value a person has. The value is determined by the objective outcomes the person produces. Werner von Braun has done more for humanity then all of the socialist icons combined. He is still a disgusting person.

Imagine humanity like a spacestation. Science and Industry forming the hull, society on the interior, hard physics on the outside. The things a EVA worker contributes to all life inside the hull, can be substantial while he is a useless drunk on the inside. And somebody with a fishbowl over his head, cosplaying astronaut on the inside contributes nothing. Somebody yelling - redistribute the spacesuits, its cold in here - does more damage to society, then the useless drunk ever will.