[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?

[ztjio]

No? I don't see how you arrived at that, it seems entirely non-sequitur. I guess you deeply misunderstood what I meant by "moral distance." I'm simply trying to give a name to the idea that there isn't just a binary good vs. bad, and that some things are vastly worse than others. You might choose to represent it on a simple scale where bad is in the negative and good in the positive. In such a case, moral distance would be the distance between the two points on that scale. That's all. This representation would have no impact on whether a single individual can do things that exist on polar opposites of such a scale.

In the context of my comment the point is more about the distance between saying something rude and killing someone, it would be a large distance despite both being negative, and the tolerance levels would likely start somewhere in the negative side of the scale, though in reality you're going to be dealing with much more complex perceptions of good vs. bad behavior and social tolerance of it. But when you compare to the law that's going to have more of a concrete boundary. But it's still not 0 on this scale.

[fc417fc802]

It depends on if your question is about legality, morality, social stability, privilege of some sort, or perhaps something else.

If someone offered to cure cancer, but only if you permitted them to commit a single specific murder, is that a reasonable trade? All you've got there is yet another trolley problem.

[raxxorraxor]

It would be a pretty classic ethical dilemma if they couldn't develop a cure for cancer if you deny them murdering anyone. In the other case it would only be correct to try them for murder since it would be an independent act.

[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.