If there really are only harmful options, for sure choose the least harm. But you have to make sure that you’re not ignoring an option which involves no harm.
The problem really is when people assume there’s only two choices. If you dont like the choices, be creative and come up with something else.
I mean for most things there are almost unlimited choices. One can go mad in response to something. So just want to add to not assume there are only two effective choices and be creative to look for another possible effective choice. I mean if you find a new choice to avoid a choice that you can see will have the same result of the first choice then making the new choice is effectively the same as the other choice.
I’d caveat that if you didnt know the new choice would result in the same thing as the first choice, you still gained new knowledge by trying it out. We also can’t know all the answers all the time.
Obviously true? In real life I’ve found it’s often worth doing a bit of thinking / effort to find a third option though. Not always possible though - like when voting - though I don’t think picking the least worst (imho) option when it comes to political representation is immoral
It’s a good concept but I’m more fond of the concept of sound. It comes down to personal preference.
It’s highly context dependent.
In medicine, you face this question all the time. Will a surgery do more harm than good. Can I just leave that person suffering, or should I roll the dice with this surgery? It’s a proper dilemma to ponder. How about this medication, that improves the patient’s quality of life in one area, but causes some side effects that are less horrifying than the underlying condition. Sounds like a win, but is it really?
In various technical contexts, you often find yourself comparing two bad options and pick the one that is “less bad”. Neither of them are evil, good, great or even acceptable. They’re both bad, and you have to pick one so that the machine can work for a while longer until you get the real spare parts and fix it properly. For example, you may end up running a water pump at lower speed for the time being. It wears down the bearing, moves less water, consumes too much energy etc, but it’s still better than shutting the pump down for two weeks.
In various technical contexts
You probably do this all the time without thinking much about it. For example, updating mains-powered devices without UPS. There’s a chance the power goes out and something gets screwed up.
Yeah, but depending on where you live that would be a freak accident and not something worth considering. In my entire life I have never experienced a mains power outage, it’s not really a thing in Germany
Yeah. Roll the dice, hope for the best and all that. If power goes out, you could be looking at several days of troubleshooting, but it is unlikely to happen.
On the other hand, you could get that UPS, but that’s going to take time, and the server really needs those security patches today. Are you going to roll that dice instead and hope nobody tries to exploit a new vulnerability discovered this morning?
Either way, it’s pretty bad.
“lesser risk” is a lot different than “lesser evil”
so is “higher cost”
yeah I was unimpressed with those examples. usually its something where you have no real choice.
In medicine you chose the best option not the lesser evil
The way I see it, that’s just different wording for the same thing. More patient friendly, for sure.
The concept of the “lesser evil” operates as a manipulative technique, much like the neoliberal slogan “there is no alternative” (TINA). In both cases, the spectrum of alternatives is artificially narrowed to create the illusion of fewer choices than actually exist. For example, while the United States has roughly fifteen multi-state political parties, the lesser evil strategy deliberately implies there are only two.
You are intentionally shutting out reality and choosing to believe that third party candidates are viable but they absolutely are not
You are intentionally shutting out the meaning of my comment.
Which is? If it’s not trying to convince people to piss into the void by voting third party, I’m all ears
No, the First-Past-The-Post system + media polarisation makes it a two party system. If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don’t dissappear. The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.
If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don’t dissappear.
The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.
So, would the better option not be to fight for a better system or infiltrate one of the two parties and change it from within?
I think the biggest problem I have with the way the US has been working is that we just vote for the lesser evil and call it a day, thinking we’ve done our part. We’ve done all we can do. It makes things simple. It makes us feel good.
The real solution is a long, hard fight for change that will actually solve some of our problems. It involves convincing others, fierce public debate, and may result in violence. You will not be alone, but there will also be countless others who may not agree with your solution and will fight you every step of the way. Your opposition may be inspired by a genuine passion for a different solution. They may have an irrational fear of change. Some may simply benefit from the status quo and prefer to protect what they have than solve any problems for the rest of society. It’s so complicated and it’s just so much easier to offload that work to politicians.
Unfortunately, the most powerful among us know this and work as hard as possible to convince the politicians that they know better… or they just buy them out.
There is always the option to not pick.
Choosing not to act is still making a choice and may still result in a negative outcome. It’s the classic trolley problem. While you may not cause harm through an active choice, your inaction can still lead directly to a negative outcome.
I don’t remember the trolley problem being a question with a right and a wrong answer.
One of the issues the Trolley Problem explores is people’s differing willingness to allow harm versus cause it. And that can hold even when the level of harm caused by inaction is significantly higher than what is caused by taking action. E.g. If your personal philosophy dictates that killing someone is always wrong, does it hold if your inaction causes 5 deaths, 10, 50? What if we start tinkering with the people dying? Would you kill a 90 year old man to save a train full of children? The Trolley Problem is really just a starting point to examine that dichotomy between causing harm and allowing harm and just how permeable the line between them can be when you start changing the conditions. Attaching other moral choices to the problem is one way to use the problem to explore a set of beliefs.
“Allow harm”
Harm was going to happen no matter what you do in the trolley problem. There is no situation where harm does not happen, but there is a situation where you directly are causing harm.
If you give 100 different variations of the problem, I’ll answer 100 different ways, because 100 different questions were asked. Almost none of them actually having a real world application, because there are very few situations in life where a 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc option does not exist.
Personally, if I could go the rest of my life without hearing about the trolley problem that’d be great actually.
Harm was going to happen no matter what you do in the trolley problem. There is no situation where harm does not happen, but there is a situation where you directly are causing harm.
Yes, exactly. By taking no action some amount of harm occurs, had you taken action that harm would not have occurred but other harm would have. Ultimately, this is analyzing the extent to which a person is willing to allow harm via inaction versus cause harm through direct action.
Almost none of them actually having a real world application…
Like many thought experiments, the Trolley Problem is an artificial situation intended to isolate certain decision making points so that they can be analyzed. Yes, reality is messy and we often have more than two options. But having this sort of analysis ahead of time can make the real problems less complex to consider. It is also useful for looking at our philosophical frameworks and where they break down.
Personally, if I could go the rest of my life without hearing about the trolley problem that’d be great actually.
The Trolley Problem is a tool for examining our beliefs. Throwing it away because it is imperfect and uncomfortable only leads to a blindness of self.
“… or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics)
You can stand by and do nothing if that’s the lesser evil choice
I think it’s like the trolley problem: a trolley (like a train) is barreling down the tracks to a fork in the tracks. You have a lever that will divert the train. Tied to the tracks dead ahead are five innocent people who will all certainly die if you don’t throw the lever. However, one innocent person is tied to the tracks that you would divert the trolley to. Assume the trolley has no passengers and all five (or the one) will certainly be killed by the trolley.
The dilemma here is that by doing nothing, you could say you have nothing to do with the five people dying. You didn’t put them there. You can blame the person who did put them there, but by doing nothing, you can say you have no blood on your hands. Or you can pull the lever, but then the blood of the one person is absolutely on your hands, but you can say you saved the other five.
Diverting the trolley is the lesser of two evils. But is it the right call? Depends on the situation.
And of course, there’s also the unsaid option of diverting it and liberating the one in time, then the rest.
But, that is more difficult to pull off. Though better. I think if both the greater and the lesser evil support a greatly harmful outcome, then the only winning option is to support neither and fight for an option that’s better.
With FPTP in the USA, the winning option would have been that everyone who normally voted Dem, voted for Green or the Democratic Socialist Party. But again, harder to pull off since you gotta convince so many people.
Five people call out to you to save their lives with the simple pull of a lever and you shout back to them “No, I am too principled. Perhaps if I had the abilities of Superman I could save you all with this lever and then also save that person with my hands but I recognize my limitations and will therefore choose the outcome where more people will die rather than fewer.”
They’re all so proud of you for those next five seconds.
Diverting it to the direction of the one, and liberating the one, is what was meant. It’d be good to read before commenting.
It’s particularly sensitive to false dichotomies, and used to justify immoral behavior.
It’s far more effective to argue from the veil of ignorance.
I think it’s usually used to create a false dichotomy so that stockholm syndrome victims can feel good about supporting their abusers.
I use it as an excuse to view the average idiot for what they are. A slow loss is still a loss, but stupid people have convinced themselves that it’s a win. I’m glad I’m not like them.
There is no such thing as good or evil. There’s only the things that make us feel good and things that do not. For some people, the things that make them feel good are also things that make others feel good; but there’s a lot of people who only feel good by causing others to feel bad.
The only thing that matters is balancing what makes you feel better with the things that make the people you rely on feel better.
It’s rarely true.
You can aim to do something good, with a risk of something bad happening (e.g. as another poster said, rolling the dice on surgery to alleviate suffering at the risk of the patient dying)
…or you can do evil.
The “lesser of two evils” is just used as justification for something that can’t be morally justified otherwise.
Its usually used by more evil evildoers trying to paint themselves as less evil than their (real or made up) opposition, while advocating for evil. I think its a desparation move by villains who got found out.
Or arrogance and hubris of villains in politics, painting themselves as the lesser evil while aligned with their opposition against the voters they hsve contempt for.
Hey you’re finally getting it I see.
Finally is not accurate, I have known this my entire life and for over 16 years have been evangela sizing about the need for better opposition politicians offering a new deal rather than plutocratic rot led by the most unpopular candidates they could possibly find. Unpopular and candidates not fit for the moment. Everyone knows they are being screwed if not by whom. It has long been clear either the Democrats channel that anger or the Republicans will. The Democrats refused so now the Republicans will. And those Democrats are blaming everybody else. But they knew the situation and refused to change their strategy written in 1990.
https://hexbear.net/comment/6470637
You’re the “western governments vs eastern governments” racist guy. Do you finally get that you were fucking wrong?
Says the brigading tanky stroking off Russia and China.
Your argument is too stupid to refute, only a total fucking moron would want China or Russia’s government, get the fuck out of here.
Depends on the context, but almost always a strawman imo.
Evil is simpler and easier to pull off than good (because you don’t have to value everyone in your equation), so “reasonable” compromises with evil compounded enough times leads to some pretty evil outcomes.
Yes, of course. That always assumes a lack of good choice (i.e. no choice also being a bad option).
gotta call their bluff eventually. otherwise you just end up with the “lesser evil” still being genocide.
