Psh, how many objects did Saturn put up into its orbit? Catch things sure but lift things up? It's practically a moon in that category.

"who could have seen this coming, says only planet that actively works to cause this."

Hell yeah. If the government is going to use fake birds to take pictures of us you might as well take pictures of them doing it!

We Watch The Watchmen!

There's a show out now on netflix called Sisyphus, set in south korea. A central focus of it is immigration (kind of) and so in the english dub they make a big point of asking some of the people if they can speak english or saying that a character speaks english so probably isn't an immigrant. It's humous because it doesn't make sense but is relatively unique given the topic.

the piece is a little disorganized, imo, and doesn't really get into the topics that it brings up. It certainly does stand as a point about how facts and values can overlap and how natural language is an imperfect tool for expressing ideas. I would tell the author to put the first paragraph down three or so paragraphs, so that we don't read about an elephant and then wonder why we are talking about a candy bar. I would also ask the author if they wanted the "paper" to be about elephants and personhood or if they wanted it to be about the unfortunate situation of overlapping concepts that share the same word.

how can you determine if the binary of good and evil does more good or evil?

Christmas is fucking awful and I hate christmas people.

Thank you for helping me figure out how to best frame what I meant. Because I feel like the article is trying to pretend like not deciding to vote isn't itself a decision. I actually think most people would prefer a different system as far as the voting goes but we don't all agree on what the best shape of the new system would be and much like a third party option none of us feels empowered to make the change because most of us agree that this is better than a lot of other worse options. I think that's part of the plan. I think they want us to feel divided and powerless. I don't know how to fix that.

I think your desert island example is a very good use here because it exemplifies what my point was. In the desert island scenario no matter what you do at least one person will die. Because almost all people choose cannibalism over starving. So if you vote you can influence who dies but you can't prevent someone from dying. This is like you can vote but you can't control who gets into office. You don't have a moral obligation to vote as much as you have to recognize that you can only do so much to impact the results of the election and that not voting as a protest means that you still bear some of the responsibility of the outcome. You can frame voting on the island as voting for who gets eaten but also voting for who doesn't get eaten. That was my point. You can call voting for Biden a vote for biden to be in office or a vote for trump to not be in office. If you can't bring yourself to vote for biden to be in office you are also accepting that you are not voting against trump being in office, specifically because of the nature of the first past the post nature of our election system.

>Abstaining from voting isn't quite the same. If you genuinely believe that either candidate will do harm, then I don't think you have any civic responsibility to support one over the other.

If the harm were somehow equal then yes voting either way would be just as bad and so your best bet would be to not vote. But when a clear and obvious difference exists you can't pretend that you didn't play a part in the results. Mind you, in the Biden/Trump example everyone that didn't vote at all is more culpable than someone that voted but voted third party but anyone who could vote against trump and doesn't is partly responsible for him being elected. Unless you just swim away from the island or refuse to eat the meat and die of starvation you will reap the results of the vote whether you cast a vote or not.

"I bought an extra water bottle and now someone in Indonesia died because the relief effort was one water bottle short so I killed them" and "I personally chose not to use the epipen the person was begging me to stab them with while they were dying of anaphylaxis because I am morally opposed to stabbing people" are not the same. No reasonable person would be afraid of that slippery slope.

People have to make decisions that they feel are immoral to mitigate worse outcomes all the time. If cops are morally opposed to prostitution do they just not have to investigate the murder of a hooker? That awful woman who was the clerk for her town who was morally opposed to gay marriage should absolutely be legally forced to give out marriage licenses to gay people. If she didn't want to compromise her own personal morals she should have to leave her job.

You may be a super taster. I do think it's a strong flavor but not so powerful as to overwhelm roast pork and juice with a ton of garlic.

that wasn't a vs thing. You read that comment wrong. That was me responding to some of your examples. You said "Are you responsible for their death because you didn't give to a charity, or stop eating meat, or failed to take the bus to work?" So I mentioned charity and bus in my response. Those were things you brought up. How easy they were was not in my comment and has nothing to do with culpability.

The point of my original comment has nothing to do with how easy an action is. Only that action and inaction are both still choices and the article makes a false distinction between them. It acts like not voting isn't an active choice but is a passive act. The reason I brought up the trolley problem is because some people argue that not throwing the lever on the trolley and allowing 5 people to die is the right thing to do because you aren't responsible for the trolley traveling down the tracks or the 5 people being on the tracks and so if you let it happen you didn't actively kill those people but if you throw the switch then you are actively doing something and so are responsible for the one person that does die. But this is a false distinction because in the trolley problem choosing to not throw the switch is still a choice. Plus in the real world you didn't just magically appear on the trolley you chose to get on it. To relate this to voting, what the article is about, voting third party is an active choice to not vote for the better of the two most likely to win candidates because you and I and everyone that votes or doesn't vote is part of the system that has taken us to the point where the lesser of two evils is the best choice. We are all responsible for it and so if we choose to vote third party and so a republican wins instead of the democrat that we would prefer over a third party candidate that we would like even better we helped put the republican in office. We cannot pretend that we are not involved in the whole system. We don't just show up on election day and vote as though the rest of the world doesn't exist and that we aren't responsible for parts of it.

Before I write you off as absolutely insane do you mind pointing out where you think I said anything about how easy something is being part of the equation?

Biden, trump and bernie are running for office. If you vote Bernie instead of Biden on principle and trump wins the supposed lesson that Biden would learn is that he needs to be more leftist to get those bernie voters to back him next time (this doesn't really work for individuals but for parties at large. again I am simplifying) So the next election comes up and Biden is supposed to pitch more left to get the Bernie voters and the Biden voters. That is supposedly what happens when people make a third party protest vote.

But what I am suggesting is that there is just as much of a chance for Biden to try to be more centrist, thus lean to the right more, to steal votes away from Trump and allow him to win with or without the Bernie voters.

Hey, be nice. There might be some libertarians able to read in this thread.

Why not spend your whole life advocating for conservatives to consider developing a strong third party option? At least that way even if you don't succeed you will be doing some good.

Just to not have to be ambiguous lets say you are left wing politically. If you choose to vote third party because the Democrat is okay but not good enough and a Republican wins your third party vote doesn't prove the democrats need to go even harder left. They are more likely to move to the right which will make them more competitive with the other major party, the Republicans. Third party voting in the US isn't even going to register as a protest vote but instead push the closer of the two party members farther away from you.

I didn't. You did.

how easy something is and how culpable you are have nothing to do with each other. Beating someone to death with a hammer and shooting someone to death with a gun are very different in how much effort they require but you are just as morally wrong for either killing. At least in the context of killing or not and assuming no difference in extenuating circumstances. I don't even know why you would bring up how easy something is in a conversation about morality and culpability of action.

I'm not really sure what you are even trying to get at given these responses nor do I know what you expect responses to be about so I am just going to not really engage here but have a lovely day.

Not giving to charity so that the charity doesn't have enough money so that one person is ultimately bumped from their services so that they eventually go on to starve is such an insanely far cry from you could have thrown a lever that right then and there would have prevented 5 deaths that they are not equivalent, they aren't even in the same country. Unless there was a switch on the bus that says don't kill people and no one else was on that bus it isn't even close to a fair version of the trolley problem. There's nothing special about you or I that just us riding the bus is going to save someone's life, generally. Now, if I happen to be the only person who could have performed an emergency tracheotomy(thanks boy scouts) and I could have been on the bus when it was necessary to know how to do that and so someone died, no I wouldn't consider myself responsible because I wasn't literally in the room. If on the other hand I was on that bus and I can do what's needed and I don't, I would consider myself culpable in their death. I don't think that it is wrong to allow a death to happen but I do think I'd have some of the responsibility for their death.

If you are driving today and someone jumps out in front of you and you could swerve away but you don't are you responsible for that person's death? You didn't do anything to actively cause the death like steer towards them or accelerate as they tried to cross but you probably could have braked or swerved and not hit them. That's the real version of the trolley problem. The trolley problem can't exist because unless you know an evil demon bent on driving you crazy you don't just suddenly appear on a trolley a few seconds away from killing people. That can't happen. We don't spontaneously appear in locations. We choose where we go and what we do. We choose to put ourselves in situations or at least in the places that those situations can happen.

You aren't supposed to swerve away from an accident, did you know that? If you could avoid hitting another car by swerving away from it, generally, you are supposed to still hit the car because by swerving away you might hit something and then it would be your fault. If you, for instance, tried to avoid a deer in the road and thus ended up swinging your car and crossing the yellow line and hitting a car you are liable for the crash where before hitting the deer you might not have been liable and or even if you are liable for that crash you at least didn't hit another car.

"That’s because you have a special proprietary responsibility for acts you perform. Those choices and acts are, in some special sense, yours, distinct from outcomes that result from combining your choices and acts with everyone else’s."

The above makes it seem like not voting for the lesser of two evils isn't itself a choice. That voting for the lesser of two evils would be a choice but that not voting so that you didn't help elected an evil even if it is lesser isn't still making a choice. All things are choices, even the choice not to engage. You ARE responsible for the outcomes of choices you refuse to engage with. Letting 5 people die because you don't want to personally be responsible by throwing the lever is still you being responsible for killing 5 people in the trolley problem. The reason it could even be framed differently is because the trolley problem is a hypothetical that can't be real. How did you get on the trolley to begin with? You have to take responsibility for getting into the problem in the first place when it comes to the real world.