So giving someone a paper cut is worse than burning down someone's store in which their life savings were invested? Come on, these issues aren't covered by such trivial sound bites.
You should try harder to give people the benefit of the doubt - you can't expect people to list every single possible caveat for every opinion they express. The article, and the parent post, both do not equate such a contrived minor injury to destroying an entire business, and you absolutely know this.
> You should try harder to give people the benefit of the doubt - you can't expect people to list every single possible caveat for every opinion they express.
The position, as stated, is literally false which my argument by absurdity demonstrates. So what I expect, is that people attempt to make true statements, and where the truth value is contextual, then their phrasing also ought to reflect that nuance, ie. damaging a person is typically morally more serious than damaging an object, and psychologically damaging a person is typically worse than physically damaging an object.
There are no qualifiers in the original claim to reflect this nuance, and like it or not, people absolutely do believe unqalified claims until they are challenged on it. Why do you think slogans and propaganda are so effective.
I agree it's an "absurd counterexample". That's the whole point of a reductio ad absurdum. It shows the fallacy at the core of the argument with which you whole heartedly agreed. Precision is important in ethics.
Furthermore, even if I were to be maximally charitable in interpreting the argument as "damaging a person is typically morally more serious than damaging an object, and psychologically damaging a person is typically worse than physically damaging an object", not everyone would even agree with that, contra your post. I don't think you appreciate how broad ethics is as a topic; virtue ethics and deontological ethics both dispute the premises from which this argument is constructed.
Finally, discrediting an argument you agreed with does not somehow discredit or insult you as a person, so not sure where you got that from.
You quoted an ethical principle, then said it was obviously true. Now you're claiming that you don't actually believe in the ethical principle that you claimed was so obviously true?
If you're now claiming that the principle was "true" in some vague unspecified way, but not literally true, then like I said, say what you mean and mean what you say, and don't get bent out of shape when people point out the problems with this sort of imprecise reasoning.
It brings my heart such great joy to know that there are people out there like you who are willing to argue about trivialities that don't actually matter.
Not everything is a deep philosophical discussion that needs to get down to absolute true statements.
Sometimes it's just someone, like me, who is sick of black people being literally murdered by police and thinks it's absurd that white assholes get more worked up over some property than over black lives.
I literally don't give a single shit about absolute ethical principles.
Yeah, who cares about "trivialities" like "my ethical principles are inconsistent or absurd"?
Apparently, all the people who criticize the ethics of the police, the ethics of politicians, the ethics of racist economic policies, and so on. I mean, it's not like consistent ethical principles might go into devising something like a Constitution that recognizes people's natural rights and restricts government from infringing on those rights.
Amazing that you managed to turn this into a partisan attack on "your side" when all that's being discussed is the logical inconsistency of your own stated principles.
Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN. You've been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account, because it destroys what the site is supposed to be for.
>Black lives matter? According to black on black crime statistics and black abortion rates, they don't
>Willing to take the L for saying the truth on this one.
>Judging by how the protests and riots have settled down already in less than 2 weeks, they are finished making use of black lives to further their political goals.
You seem sick with hatred, not to mention casting yourself as a victimized underdog who knows the Truth.
I am indeed sick of political bullshit. One day, you may open your eyes and properly understand that I, as much as you, want something to be done for black Americans to right the wrongs. However, I can't help but call out the people who are simply using the death of one garbage man who threatened a pregnant woman at gunpoint to further their political goals, and then only after 2 weeks, they go back to their regular reporting after they've made their use of the movement to do their job. Nothing has changed. They've just milked the death of a man, like they did before with the other men before him. One day, I'd like to see a real organic movement that will enact real change. Until then, this is just a spectacle in our current clown world.
If your immediate reaction to statistics (which I am not claiming the accuracy of, by the way, since you provide no sources) is "oh, it's because they're black" then congratulations, you're a racist!
Furthermore, the protests have not died down, there have been events that sparked more protests in more places. They're just not being reported as much because "oh well that's old time to move on to the next thing", says the media.
Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN. You've been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account, because it destroys what the site is supposed to be for.
