The Gaming Den

And that's all very interesting (not really) and very irrelevant (really). If this were a thread about the dangers of time travel or the historical causes of the Holocaust, then people might give a shit. But it's not, and pointing out that if unspecified detail X about the hypothetical is true then the correct decision changes means that we just have to add ~X to our description of the hypothetical. So you suggest Himmler would take Hitler's place, and I give you the option between shooting Hitler and Himmler or two plumbers. The only time throwing a wrench into a hypothetical is interesting is if the hypothetical can't deal with it in a non-trivial way, but the solutions to the problems you're proposing are incredibly trivial and obvious. Which means what you've actually done is suggested we play a very slow and very easy (and potentially infinitely long) game of whack-a-mole. No, thank you. That doesn't sound fun at all.

Omegonthesane wrote:

Maj wrote:

Sigil wrote:
The average human life has immense potential worth. And I'd like to think that, on average, people have a positive worth. Therefore, saving a life that you know nothing about, on average, will be good and you should do it.

As for how you actually define worth, the most simplistic and base way to describe it would be "The more I like something, the more worth it has to me" and expanding that to a broader scale "the more people on average like something, the more worth it has". The real trouble is determining what people like.

I asked the question because I didn't understand why - if lives have no inherent value - saving them was even something to think about. DSM cleared that up by saying that people do have value, not necessarily inherent, and based on some criteria I don't fully understand.

Personally, as much as the idea is anathema to many people here, I believe that there is value in Bad Stuff™. Many of the greatest lessons in my life came from Bad Stuff™, and I believe that Bad Stuff™ contributed to significant moments in history, like the formation of my country's government. So discounting someone because they have a directly negative value seems incredibly myopic to me. <shrug>

Please elaborate - how was the Bad Stuff™ vital to the good, in such a way that it was better than sorting it out in other ways?

Conflict and competition beget progress. Progress that will be used in the peacetime to improve the lot of mostly everybody.

Almaz wrote:Hey, the question is a legitimate one about how much responsibility you assign to Adolf Hitler and not, say, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, and so on, and what will actually save the most lives - killing him or being an undercover Jewish sympathizer?

Other than the part where you say the question is legitimate that is correct. Because that question is bullshit. If you take out Hitler as a college student is is really obvious that Himmler and Goring do not have the charisma and political skills to orchestrate the Nazi rise to power. Now, if you want to suppose that there would exist some hypothetical person who just happened to be German, have all of Hitlers skills, and happened to hate Jews as much, that is fine, but no one is going to take you seriously.

The question is not if killing Hitler after he organizes a movement and kills all the opposition to his movement. The question is killing him before Mein Kampf.

DSMatticus wrote:And that's all very interesting (not really) and very irrelevant (really). If this were a thread about the dangers of time travel or the historical causes of the Holocaust, then people might give a shit. But it's not, and pointing out that if unspecified detail X about the hypothetical is true then the correct decision changes means that we just have to add ~X to our description of the hypothetical. So you suggest Himmler would take Hitler's place, and I give you the option between shooting Hitler and Himmler or two plumbers. The only time throwing a wrench into a hypothetical is interesting is if the hypothetical can't deal with it in a non-trivial way, but the solutions to the problems you're proposing are incredibly trivial and obvious. Which means what you've actually done is suggested we play a very slow and very easy (and potentially infinitely long) game of whack-a-mole. No, thank you. That doesn't sound fun at all.

Heck, if you want to avoid goalpost shifting, just re-ask the question as Ted Bundy or a plumber.

I'm unclear why time travel bullshit needs to come into it at all.

I'm reasonable certain that almost everyone with situational awareness and a concept of consequences*, regardless of what their particular values actually are, could give you the names of two people, and and then identify one of those people as far more likely to make the world a worse place than the other one.


*which apparently excludes Drolyt, due to his 'good moral philosophy'.

Voss wrote:*which apparently excludes Drolyt, due to his 'good moral philosophy'.

Your inability to read is actually quite entertaining. What I actually said was the opposite of what you are claiming I said, but your interpretation is more entertaining and fits quite well with the rest of your nonsense. So yes, we can take two random people and determine which one is more likely to make the world a worse/better place. We could also determine which one is more likely to win a hot dog eating contest. Who cares?

My cat is inherently worth more than some people.

I agree, your pussy is of inestimable value compared to others.

Even if it's infected?

I'm actually genuinely interested in the net good (ie, lives saved) that came from the horrific experiments of Axis medical personnel, weighed against the number of deaths they caused. If anyone actually has such info, I'm curious.

Prak_Anima wrote:Even if it's infected?

I'm actually genuinely interested in the net good (ie, lives saved) that came from the horrific experiments of Axis medical personnel, weighed against the number of deaths they caused. If anyone actually has such info, I'm curious.

I'm actually genuinely interested in you dropping this subject. Lots of people have done evil inhumane experiments on people. The Nazis didn't even do any more useful ones because they were too busy wasting their science building missiles (good job) and trying to prove that Germans all descended from ancient nords, except the Jews who are from Africa (bad job).

You don't have to murder millions of people or start a war to do experiments, so even if they did find out anything that actually saved anyone's life ever, they didn't need a genocide to do the experiments, and someone else would have done it without the genocide.

Prak_Anima wrote:Even if it's infected?

I'm actually genuinely interested in the net good (ie, lives saved) that came from the horrific experiments of Axis medical personnel, weighed against the number of deaths they caused. If anyone actually has such info, I'm curious.

It's not actually a good exchange rate at all. Most of the experiments were rather poorly set up, and the amount of information we can glean from them is minimal. The stuff about sawing gypsies up and sewing their body parts together? I could tell you that wasn't going to work on blood type basis alone. The time trials on how long people could survive in a room full of poison gas would be somewhat interesting, but when they had genuine survivors they just shot them and dumped the bodies into the ovens with everyone else. So all we can really know from that is that a small number of people have the mutant power to not die to cyanide exposure, but since we don't even have blood samples from those people, that information is essentially useless.

About the only experiments of any lasting value were the ones where they froze Latvian children for longer and longer periods before warming them up. That is some interesting data to be had there, but the number of people treated for frost bite each year isn't enough to ever make back anything close to the lives lost in all that bullshit. Especially because as we move forward, our ability to test hypothermia treatment protocols on animals gets better and better.

infected slut princess wrote:My cat is inherently worth more than some people.

Well, you passed the most reliable variant of the Turing Test.

The nazi "experiments" were mostly garbage, especially Mengele.

Unit 731 presumably had some useful data on biological/chemical weapons, since the US kept it classified after the war. Now, you could argue that it's not worth killing so many people to develop that kind of weapons technology, and you'd be right.

Ok. I haven't looked into them really, so I wasn't sure. Thank you, Frank.

The only possibility for the holocaust being a good thing is the idea that without Hitler being a focal point for hatred and escalating the situation, then the situation of Jews, non-Caucasians, Gypsies, Homosexuals and so on being a subclass who are discriminated against might have lasted decades and caused more suffering than what actually happened.

I mean, when did apartheid end? If things hadn't escalated, then would 1930s Germany have continued on for decades or possibly until now?

Yeah, it was so great when we ended up with the State of Israel. That definitely caused zero human suffering.

Drolyt wrote:

Voss wrote:*which apparently excludes Drolyt, due to his 'good moral philosophy'.

Your inability to read is actually quite entertaining. What I actually said was the opposite of what you are claiming I said, but your interpretation is more entertaining and fits quite well with the rest of your nonsense. So yes, we can take two random people and determine which one is more likely to make the world a worse/better place. We could also determine which one is more likely to win a hot dog eating contest. Who cares?

You, obviously, since you responded to someone's throw away comment in the first place, and then made an entire separate thread about it, and continue to argue about it. Strangely enough you can't legitimately throw 'Who cares?' into an argument when you've contributed to it for several days.



@Parthenon- that would only be true if humanity as a whole learned something from all of that, and those things went away. While there is certainly more awareness of discrimination and people being treated like shit, it has hardly disappeared, and a quick scan will indicate that it is all becoming quite popular again as part of political platforms, and the practice of discrimination and treating groups people as subclasses never really diminished all that much. The discussion of it became more nuanced, and some people are taught that isn't acceptable way to behave, but it is still deeply imbedded in most societies.


What we actually got instead (particularly in the States, since none of the negative effects actually hit the homefront) was a couple generations that grew up with the concept of Noble and Justified War, because the moral issues involved were so damn easy, at least for the European theatre. Sadly, the moral issues in the Pacific are still often glossed over and ignored, partly because they are more complex, in addition to the fair dose of persistent racism.[/i]

Voss wrote:

Drolyt wrote:

Voss wrote:*which apparently excludes Drolyt, due to his 'good moral philosophy'.

Your inability to read is actually quite entertaining. What I actually said was the opposite of what you are claiming I said, but your interpretation is more entertaining and fits quite well with the rest of your nonsense. So yes, we can take two random people and determine which one is more likely to make the world a worse/better place. We could also determine which one is more likely to win a hot dog eating contest. Who cares?

You, obviously, since you responded to someone's throw away comment in the first place, and then made an entire separate thread about it, and continue to argue about it. Strangely enough you can't legitimately throw 'Who cares?' into an argument when you've contributed to it for several days.

Your argument is that I care about hot dog contests because I started this thread? I'm not sure what to say, other than that your reading comprehension continues to amaze and entertain.

Let me help you understand. "Who cares?" is connected to "We could also determine which one is more likely to win a hot dog eating contest." It is a rhetorical device connected to "So yes, we can take two random people and determine which one is more likely to make the world a worse/better place." The point is those two measures are equally meaningless because you haven't explained what you want to do with the information or what it represents. I suppose you think that is how you calculate "worth" but giving it a label doesn't actually give it meaning.

What the fuck is wrong with you people

Kaelik wrote:Other than the part where you say the question is legitimate that is correct. Because that question is bullshit. If you take out Hitler as a college student is is really obvious that Himmler and Goring do not have the charisma and political skills to orchestrate the Nazi rise to power. Now, if you want to suppose that there would exist some hypothetical person who just happened to be German, have all of Hitlers skills, and happened to hate Jews as much, that is fine, but no one is going to take you seriously.

The question is not if killing Hitler after he organizes a movement and kills all the opposition to his movement. The question is killing him before Mein Kampf.

Well, I believe the question specified "in the 1930s" initially, which coloured my responses. Looking back, yes, it did, it said in 1930. I mistook it for "sometime that decade" but alas. The point is moot. I had, in my response, assumed that the sociopolitical movement towards atrocity was well underway. For reference, Mein Kampf is published in 1925. So, your victory condition is already 5 years gone.

I don't think believing that someone else could have been "Hitler" is outlandish, but I will concede it is a more extreme viewpoint. More material is the fact that "Nazism" was increasingly unified over the 1920s and by 1930 it was pretty solid.