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  • What is worse, blowing someone up on a battlefield or capturing them and sacrificing them later? I'd say the latter because the death is relatively quick and painless and included a soporific to calm the victim down. The latter was what the Aztecs did. Their wars were for capturing prisoners, not killing enemies. I don't know... that sounds like their sacrifices are more moral than blowing someone's legs off and letting them bleed out. I'd call the latter a lot more moral than the former. Because less suffering is good, right?

    • This is a very superficial view on the matter. You would have to consider all factors.

      Which practices lead to more trauma? To more future victims? What are the long-term consequences for the future? Does one decision lead to more suffering in humans 3000 years in the future for some reason? Etc. Objectively, one way is the better one. We just don't know which one it is.

      • Wait, now we don't know what is objectively morally true?

        • I would say we can't in most cases know exactly or even approximately what is the objectively morally better decision. But that doesn't make it less objective. It just makes it hard or perhaps even impossible to know.

          • How can you know it's objective if it's impossible to know what is morally better?

            • Because for something to be considered objective the only necessary condition is that how something is lies entirely with the object itself and not with the person(s) looking at it. Whether or not we can measure it in actuality doesn't matter for that definition.

              Consider you could wire every existing person up to some kind of device that measures their physical and psychological pain and gives out a number, it doesn't matter who looks at it, it would obviously always be the same number.

              • You think everyone has the same levels of physical and psychological pain tolerance? Nonsense. I have trigeminal neuralgia. I'm would bet my pain tolerance is objectively a hell of a lot higher than yours at this point.

                • Why does that matter? Than for you the device would simply give out a smaller number.

                  • I thought the device was a way to measure objective truths. How could they be objective if our numbers are different for the same type of pain generation?

                    • Because the question isn't whether or not each action causes the same pain in everyone, but whether or not it is theoretically measurable and comparable.

                      • How do you measure it accurately if it isn't the same for everyone? How is this number calculated when pain is subjective? Because pain is not objective. Some people even enjoy pain.

272 comments