Maximizing Freedom is the Goal of Morality

If you have the right to keep typing whatever the hell you feel like typing, then this right applies to me, also. I feel like bitching how you guys are wasting your debate on bullshit questions.Would you cut off your penis to bring back Elvis? Would you rape a 10 year old girl to prevent her from being taken by goblins? Would you kill a Muslim to stop Hitler from being born? I mean, what kind of questions are these if they're not bullshit questions?I'm gonna keep bitching until I've determined it not necessary for me to keep bitching. Yes, I must bitch in order to keep you from being raped by the pope. The very fact that you haven't been raped by the pope is proof that my bitching does indeed stop him from raping you.

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

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He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

Well, actually, no. Because now, you're brining this thread off-topic (and me too for replying so lets just drop it). What's that like? Being such a bitch.... No. Yes. I don't know. Rhetorical? Hypothetical? Nonetheless, they're still answerable. Just because you can't see the merit of a question doesn't mean that there isn't one, or that others don't have some. Its unneccessary for you to interupt with your incredulity. Fine, that's fine. I'll continue to ignore you but, damn... you're junking up the board. I've heard that sometimes it helps to take the sand out of your vagina.

But... what is survival without freedom? Can we even answer that question? I suppose this is my main focus. Why would we sacrifice something (freedom) in order to gain something that isn't desireable in any way? In fact, it would be to gain something that is even abhorent in a lot of ways. I'm not so much avoiding admitting survival is more important, I just can't see how it is. I equated them, because it seemed that they honestly get equated at some point. That is, if we removed freedom to the point that we were all robots... would a "human" still exist? It seems honest to me to admit that the two are equal at some point. Sure I would, if I could safely assume they'ed want their life to be saved (and such a stance would be the "default"). Of course, the chaining would be temporary. I don't know what I'd do if it was "chain them down for the rest of their life" in order to keep them from dying. I mean, if we take "chain them down" to symbolize them being restricted from doing anything at all... I'm not so sure if the default stance is still to save their "life". What life do they have left if they can't do anything at all?In such situations, we can only make our best decision on what their likely thoughts would be. Would most of the species rather "live" in a vegetable state, never to be awakened, or die right away? I know I'd choose to die right away, as long as the possibility or hope of recovery is impossible. And that's the situation I'm talking about.If I knew they'ed rather die, then, of course, I would not chain them down. Similar to how I wouldn't hesitate to pull the plug on someone's breathing machine, if I knew that would be their wishes in such a scenario. No. If "ultimate freedom" would also mean "ultimate death", then it's not worth it. But given the choice between "zero freedom" and "ultimate death", I'd go with ultimate death, even on a species-level.
I mean, let's say you choose "zero freedom". No one's going to be happy or thank-ful about it, they're no longer free to feel that way. They're simply robots, waiting for the next input to perform the next task. With no hope, or possible exit from that state, ever.Maybe that last part wasn't clear. If we're saying "survival" is more important than "removing all freedoms, but maybe, one day, it's possible that we can get those freedoms back.." Then I agree that survival is more important. But, of course, this isn't removing all freedom. If it's removing all freedom, or surviving... I think that we should choose to die. This is a seperate question, not the one I'm looking into. I agree that "ultimate freedom" isn't worth our existance. And we should limit our freedom for our own protection, if such limits are necessary for that protection. But this says nothing for why we should choose to "survive" over being free.I still see the two as equal. If we choose to survive, but sacrifice all freedom... we're now robots, and I don't consider robots "alive" anyway, so we've lost the very thing we were trying to save.If we choose death. At least we retain our dignity, and end up with exactly the same result. I think you're assuming too much of me. I agree that safety precautions, being cautious, and a healthy dose of skepticism are good things. This, however, changes nothing with my stance that freedom (overall) is more important than survival (overall).Can you describe "surviving" without any freedom at all? And why it should be cosidered a good thing in any way? Perhaps if you could do that, I'd see why you think survival is more important.

I think I agree with this.In fact, I think we've really agreed this whole time. I admit that the scenario I'm thinking of in which freedom should be chosen over survival most likey doesn't exist in a practical sense. I don't see how anyone could "guarantee" that we would stay in a state of "zero freedom" forever. And, as long as we're alive, there's hope for recovery.I agree that in this practical sense, survival should be thought of as greater than freedom.But, well, theoretically, I still find freedom to be more important. And I've kinda been talking theoretically from the beginning of this thread I agree, on a practical level, as long as we can assume that no one can destroy any "hope" of freedom-recovery.I understand how the choice of human-species destruction is rather theoretical in itself. But I do admit that such a choice has a higher-chance of being a part of reality than "infinitely preventing all chance of freedom-recovery for all eternity" does.

Being a star trek freak, I can relate this line of thought to one particular episode of DS9.A Federation Think Tank composed of genetically engineered individuals with IQ's that are off the chart concludes that the Federation's war with the Dominion would end with an unconditional surrender by the Federation after 100 billion Federation citizens dead. However, if the Federation is to surrender right away, 10 generations later there will be an uprising and a new greater and much more powerful Federation will form and destroy the Dominion. Since you guys are discussing about saving the world by raping a little girl, I can't see why I can't bring up a star trek episode to relate to our scenario.Anyway, I think that survival first or not really depends on the situation. If I was a German who wanted to help some Jews, I'd stay low and try to help in ways that would not get killed outright. Sure if this seems cowardly. But what good am I if I'm dead? How many Jews can I help when I'm dead?On the other hand, if someone points a semi-automatic into a crowd of people with me in it, rather than scream and be gunned down, I'd rather try to rally the crowd to stomp on this joker with the semi-automatic. Of course, right down to it, ultimately freedom is more important than survival. If it wasn't, Britain would have surrendered to the Germans. Russia would have surrendered. Greece would have surrendered. Heck, we would have surrendered right after Pearl Harbor.By fighting back, a lot more of our people died, but the rest retained their freedom. Would you have agreed with the Federation Think Tank that insisted on surrendering to the Dominion right away to save 100 billion lives?

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

​

He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

No need for the plural. One person posed the question and the same person answered it--in the same post. If you dislike such questions, and answers, please address your complaint to the appropriate individual.I am interested (as I see others are) in learning why the individual's choice would be as described. The information was volunteered--quite out of the blue, I assure you--for discussion. Yet the rationale given to support it was vague.My motive is curiosity. Why the odd answer? Why, for that matter, the odd question?True, the scenario hardly amounts to a real-life situation. But neither does anything on Star Trek. Whence comes the necessity of posing and deciding such--what did you call them--"bullshit questions"?___Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

I see.. not enough information.Do I have this right?Choice A:
-100 billion people die (within the current generation)
-unconditional surrender to the Dominion (within the current generation)But... what does the surrender entail? Becoming complete slaves? Or simply living under their social rules of conduct?
And how long does this last? Is there no chance, ever, of becoming free again?Choice B:
-surrender right away, save 100 billion lives (current generation)
-10 generations later, an uprising occurs and humanity forms even stronger than before and destroys the DominionBut, again, what does "surrender" entail? Are the terms slightly better in some way?Do I have the information correct?In general, I suppose we'ed have to know "how good" these Think Tank guys are. Are they ever wrong? Are they ever fooled? Can they possibly understand exactly how things are going to unfold... 10 generations into the future?But, the question is valid, I'll just make a few assumptions:1. The Think Tank is undisputable. For purposes of this scenario, they will be taken as perfect, absolute predictors of the future.
2. It will be assumed that losing to the Dominion in Choice A will entail complete slavery of the worst conditions, with absolutely no chance of ever being free again, for eternity.In this case, I'd easily opt for Choice B. I don't see how anyone couldn't. It's then simply the difference between choosing future freedom over the loss of eternal freedom.The two assumptions are key, of course. Any unknowns on either of those two assumptions would add to leaning towards Choice A over Choice B.

According to the Changeling, Earth was to be completely scorched to prevent any chance of uprising in the future after the war is won. The humans will be hunted to extinction. So, whatever the future holds for the Federation and the Dominion, after the war is lost there won't be any human left to speak of. The 100 billion plus casualty will include human and alien members of the Federation. When Cadassia surrendered to the Dominion, they retained all their social structures and all their military organizations. The only thing that changed was that they would now have to fight for the Changelings (Founders) whenever they are called to do so. The Dominion extended this offer to the Federation. Surrender now and pretty much the only thing that will change is the Federation will need to fight for the Changelings whenever they call. Pretty much.As you can see, the writers of Star Trek made sure that the offer of surrender seemed like a very very good deal and that not surrendering right away will mean a very harsh end for humanity. According to Star Trek, these think tank guys are the smartest humans to have ever lived. They were genetically engineered solely to foresee the future.No, they can't actually see the future. We later find out that they are not infallible because, like most things, the events that lead to the future are a chaotic system. There are just too many variables for anyone/anything/any organization to wrap their heads around.These think tank guys everything right in the much nearer future. But the result of their calculations of the far future was but one branch of possibility among many. They simply arrived at the most probable future. Well... according to Star Trek they can out-calculate even the best computers the Federation had to offer. If you give them a problem to solve, they'd solve it with their minds faster than the fastest computers of the Star Trek universe could solve. But no, they are not absolute predictors of the future. They can only foresee the most probable future timeline. As well as the extinction of the human race. So, if the Federation will ever recover, it will be headed by another race like the Vulcan or the Xindi. Well, I'll tell you this much. The hardheaded Starfleet Command decided to fight it out. Turned out that the think tank didn't put into account the god-like alien race called The Prophets. Captain Sisko pleaded The Prophets to help the Federation. In a blink of an eye, The Prophets wiped some 3 thousand Dominion warships out of existence. Didn't win the war for the Federation, but it did even the odds out a little bit. TADA!!!!Which brings back to my original point. The reason why I called the raping little girl questions bullshit questions is because (1) while there are answers to them those answers are essentially meaningless due to practicality, (2) we will never ever encounter such a scenario with raping the 10 year old girl to save humanity thing... I mean... come on for goodness sakes..., (3) there ain't enough information attached to those questions for anyone to make any morally consistent decision either way, and (4) the moral implications of those questions (if they have any) are completely useless in the face of reality.Would Ted Haggard rape a boy... ok bad example.Would president Bush eat a unicorn to win the war in Iraq? You can't answer that question without saying "wait a minute... huh?" to yourself.

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Disclaimer:

​

Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

​

He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

Yeah, I never really meant the scenario as realistic in anyway in the first place. In fact, any scenario I describe is always meant in an extreme "theoretical" fashion. That is, it's the ideal that's important to look at or try to understand, not the actual scenario in and of itself. Seems to me, that when we make stuff up, it's good to keep in mind that, well... we just made it up.Then again, I am thankful for the resulting dialect from that scenario. Although not exactly the way I wanted to go about it, it certainly did get me thinking through some un-thought-about situations, and therefore I learnt stuff.At the end, the most I can see is that freedom = survival as we remove more and more freedom. Which, to me, insinuates that freedom is greater than survival. Of course, there's much over-lap and likely plenty of difficult scenarios to think through. But my main first-thought on the matter (freedom is more important than survival) has remained unchanged.

Just wanted to say thanks for the links again, JavaMan.I've read over a bunch of the wikipedia articles, in addition:Utilitarianism - Wikipedia
(where all of the following quotes are taken).I agree with most points of Utilitarianism. But I do like the definition provided by this fellow. That is, instead of looking for "happiness", we're looking for: I agree that it should be the individual's personal preferences that should be followed by that individual rather than anyone's particular idea of happiness. Such an alternative isn't really what's intended by "happiness" in this context anyway, but Peter Singer's description seems to make it clearer.Which tends to bring up the simple problem of how to deal with sadists, or anyone who prefers to hurt others. The answer is rather obvious though, and comes from the very foundation of the principle itself. As I've attempted to say many times: That is to say, the governing principle is: And given such definitions, this seems to be the biggest misconception I run into: Which, of course, is ridiculous. And better clarified by: I'm still not thrilled with that wording, but the ideal I'm thinking of is nicely shown with the provided examples: The only problem now, is "measuring happiness". And, well, I'm not sure if that's empirically possible. And therefore must be confronted with nothing less than "the best use of our abilities to judge." But, if anyone has a moral system that doesn't run into this problem, or deals with it in better terms while still treating all people's subjective preferences equally, I'm certainly listening.I do plan on reading the online PDFs available for Mill's essays you brought up, but such reading will take me a while. Likely, this thread will be long forgotten by the time I'm through with those. But thanks again for pointing to the information. I'm not quite sure if I'm a utilitarian or not. Some of the objection-related "extreme case" scenarios from strictly following the principles seem very strange indeed. But I'm not sure if those scenario's come up from following the ideal of "letting people do what they want as long as they don't harm others", or if it's a bit of a straw-man extreme-ideal created by the objectors.In any case, the reading is very interesting to me, and I'm learning a great deal from it, thanks.