311 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

Uh, no. You clearly have an inapt and/or incomplete understanding of ethics and what they comprise because that simply is not the case.

 

Unfortunately, most, if not all, people have opinions on subjects that conflict when examined together.

And those people's moral positions are incoherent.  Resolving that is necessary before making any associated decision with any confidence at all.

Isn't there? I think you have to first say 'wipe out everything' (or the equivalent to it) and then when your squad questions that order, you are given the choice to say something like 'try to avoid the colonists, but let nothing stop you'.

But there's no way to know that before you choose.  "Wipe out everything" is an absurd thing to say.  "Protect the ship" is not.

 

Telling them to mow down the colonists is openly malicious.  Malice is an extreme position in all circumstances.  Having to choose between "don't hurt them even if it means we all die" and "kill them regardless of any associated benefit" is insane.

[AlanC9]

But that's outcome-based analysis.
 
The right thing to do in the moment was accept that there were bad things that might happen that would be your fault in you didn't prevent them, and bad things that might happen that wouldn't be your fault if you didn't prevent them.  So I chose to prevent the things that would have been my fault, and accept that the bad things that happened as a result weren't my doing, so I carried none of the moral responsibility.

I'm not sure how you're assigning "fault" there.
 

I honestly don't remember which was Paragon and which was Renegade, because I didn't care about those categorizations when I was playing.

The Paragon choice is the supposedly risky one -- avoiding immediate and highly probable bad stuff at the risk of other bad stuff likely happening later which would almost certainly be worse. That's what makes this decision a good example of the pattern, because the later bad stuff doesn't actually happen. I don't particularly care about how Bio scores decisions either. I care about how they're assigning results to the decisions.

[PhroXenGold]

I believe I just labelled those people as lunatics.

 

There's a far more accurate label for such people: human.

[AlanC9]

It's not only possible, but very common to hold inconsistent opinions and be aware of those. When you are faced with conflicting views, they need not be a question of value of one over another... especially when you are supposed to hold all ethical principles upon which you derive your morals from as equal to one another. 
 
Take for example this excerpt from guidelines on ethics in medicine:

Well, as that quote says, "A quite different criticism of the method makes the opposite point, finding it deficient because it does not yield clear answers to troubling moral quandaries." So the point is that a lot of people use bad methods or no method to make these decisions, right? I guess you won't find too much disagreement on that.

[In Exile]

It's not only possible, but very common to hold inconsistent opinions and be aware of those. When you are faced with conflicting views, they need not be a question of value of one over another... especially when you are supposed to hold all ethical principles upon which you derive your morals from as equal to one another. 

 

Take for example this excerpt from guidelines on ethics in medicine:

 

Sure, ultimately, the common person will typically instead ask 'What should I do?', but often times that they arrive at an incorrect conclusion because they have not examined the reasons (principles) they came to that conclusion... and thus in a similar, but different, situation regarding the same set of principles, create a conflict.

 

That excerpt doesn't illustrate holding inconsistent views. It is possible to reconcile them. And there are differening approaches to striking that balance. This is a type of analysis that courts must engage in all the time when dealing with legal principles. 

 

The idea that formal logic is a useful way of ... well, anything, really, besides dealing with abstract formal logic problems is pretty much the issue that prevents people from addressing this type of issue coherently. 

 

The resolution is developing your mechanism of choice, as the article calls it. What principle takes precedent? Do you balance competing concerns? You can't not reach a decision, and you reach that decision by working through the principles to resolve the inconsistency between them, because each individually mandates a different outcome. 

 

You're conflating the idea of resolving inconsistencies with abandoning the principles, but that's not how it works. If you'd like, I can show you a template analysis for the problem. 

 

But in any event, when you're deciding on a course of action, you are absolutely picking one value over the others. 

 

 

In this particular case, Scalia exercised his right to read the dissent from the bench. This is uncommon, and only used when a justice feels particularly strongly about the issue.

From the NY Times article

 

That's an interesting part of US courtroom procedure. 

[Dean_the_Young]

And those people's moral positions are incoherent.  Resolving that is necessary before making any associated decision with any confidence at all.

 

Yawn.
 

 

But there's no way to know that before you choose.  "Wipe out everything" is an absurd thing to say.  "Protect the ship" is not.

 

Telling them to mow down the colonists is openly malicious.  Malice is an extreme position in all circumstances.  Having to choose between "don't hurt them even if it means we all die" and "kill them regardless of any associated benefit" is insane.

 

 

 

And demonstrating a limited perspective.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I'm not sure how you're assigning "fault" there.

Spoiler

The guy who wires people to explode is the one who is at fault for their eventual deaths. I felt no guilt at letting them die, because I wasn't the one who killed them. But if I let the bad guy go, then I haven't done my job, and I'm at least partly responsible for the consequences of that failure.

The Paragon choice is the supposedly risky one -- avoiding immediate and highly probable bad stuff at the risk of other bad stuff likely happening later which would almost certainly be worse. That's what makes this decision a good example of the pattern, because the later bad stuff doesn't actually happen. I don't particularly care about how Bio scores decisions either. I care about how they're assigning results to the decisions.

I'm unwilling to use hindsight to judge decisions. Decisions are made based on the information available at the time, and should be judged based solely on that information. To do otherwise is to deny the linearity of time.

The Paragon decision is, I think, incredibly reckless (not unlike saving Redcliffe in DAO, but the BDtS example is far stronger). It's clearly the wrong decision.

[Sylvius the Mad]

There's a far more accurate label for such people: human.

I find those are broadly equivalent.

[Enigmatick]

Anyone mention the mage tower solution to Connor's quest? Because man, that's a bad case of reckless idealistic choices being rewarded.

[Steelcan]

Anyone mention the mage tower solution to Connor's quest? Because man, that's a bad case of reckless idealistic choices being rewarded.

ain't that the truth

[Sylvius the Mad]

Anyone mention the mage tower solution to Connor's quest? Because man, that's a bad case of reckless idealistic choices being rewarded.

Yes it is, but I don't see anything wrong with that.

Good decisions shouldn't always succeed. But that doesn't stop them from being good decisions.

[PhroXenGold]

Anyone mention the mage tower solution to Connor's quest? Because man, that's a bad case of reckless idealistic choices being rewarded.

 

I did mention it, and yes, it's awful.