So basically, we're animals so fuck the world and everybody in it and let it come down to who can kill everyone else faster? Do you have any sense of empathy?

If your best friend dies a thousand miles away you're still going to care more than if another person you don't know in the third world drops dead. One is a friend, the other is a statistic. You have assigned more value to one than to the other, indeed it is questionable whether you can really value people in the third world that much when you only know them as a number. We assign value to people for a lot of things: Physical proximity to ourselves, social proximity, their production as parts of society, our emotional knowledge of them. But these are all assigned rather than constant values, and the assigned value for people who don't exist within our society is rather low. I doubt it really keeps you awake at night thinking about all the people who die the world over, but someone valuable to you? That has a much higher chance.

Murder is an unlawful killing, and in that much you are right, it is generally frowned upon by society. There are however many lawful killings that still involve the person dying being relatively innocent that are not frowned upon by society.

I didn't say it was morally wrong, I just said it was killing another human being. And if you are inconsequent in that behavior then you are flat out accepting or even supporting the killing of a human being.
It may not be murder, since abortion is legal, but it's still human - and exterminating it is still socially accepted destruction of human life.

The people in these experiments and situations were normal people, college students and the like. They had basic moral concepts and almost without fail enviromental factors caused them to discard or over-ride those concepts very quickly.

One may have a sense of empathy, but logic and empathy don't mix too well. Logically, RE makes an excellent point. A sensitive human being who loves dancing in the rain and flowers and puppies and rivers of chocolate would disagree with his facts, because they are "wrong"(read: mean)

I lost my empathy years ago. Now its just varying degrees of suspicion and distrust of those empowered over me. If mankind wants to be elevated above animals then we should perhaps stop acting like them. Individually some people might not be shrill selfish hacks ready to screw their fellow man over for a slight monetary gain but as a group humanity has done a piss poor job of managing its affairs. So in the interim i shall raise my family to respect our fellow man and be courteous and forthright to everyone we meet, but always ready to put boot to ass when the inevitability of violence is occasioned towards us. I would think that if that particular model was followed a bit more widely, the world would have less problems in it. Live and let Live.

I realize that the majority of mankind is to some extent "evil", but we are all capable of evil, simply with different extents to which it can effect others. We've all done wrong, and we'll probably do wrong again, but giving people the benefit of the doubt/ second, third, so on chances, is what everyone needs, and wants. We all make mistakes
"Treat others and you would wish to be treated"

I prefer: 'Do as you will be done by and do it first.'

Natural selection is survival of the fittest, whereas genocide is more like "I may be dumb and unathletic, but I have a gun".

There are logical ways to explain what you call empathic behaviour. Take the categorical imperative, for example.

You can be aware of the facts and still think that it's better to try to change them instead of behaving reactionary towards everything.

With being "close" I didn't mean only the amount of space in between.
two people.
Just because people don't care about death of those they don't know doesn't mean that those people did not have any value, it just means that you don't realize that they have any value. Most likely those people are valued by their families and friends just as much as you value your family and friends.


Such as?



It's killing a number of cells that have the potential to be human, so it is not the same as killing a human.
But even if people support or accept killing innocents in some cases that does not mean that you should go ahead and exterminate all those people who you think are a problem.

Which shows us that it is probably a good idea to avoid certain environmental factors.
Besides, those experiments do not necessarily show how people would really behave in a similar situation. Being aware that you are part of an experiment and that you can end this experiment if you want to usually changes results to some degree.

We could also, y'know, kill everyone including ourselves. Then there would be no more suffering or 'nuisance' populations to deal with.

See? Fat Controller gets it. If you've got a headache, decapitation is an effective cure.

You don't need bullets, you just need concentration extermination camps.

That was just to show you that genocide isn't the way. Everyone thinks "nazis are the most evil people on earth", well, they are one of the people/movements that used genocide. And if you know a little history, you know it didn't resolve anything.

Trying to achieve world peace by genocide is just weak. It's using the easiest way of achieving your goal, without caring for the millions of human lives you're about to end. I don't think anyone would think of genocide as a solution if you were amongst the innocent victims.
Sure, it might be a solution in some cases, but it just shouldn't be. The fact only that you have to kill to achieve it already should make you deny that solution.

I am popping into the discussion late again.

It however is not efficient, just like genocide. If one's foot hurts, one doesn't cut off one's leg. Even that doesn't guarantee no more pain, as the root of the problem might be somewhere else.

ultimately all problems stem from the head, because it is where all problems are perceived, so in this satirical analogy of over-extremism and lunacy, lopping one's head off would solve a head ache, after one died anyway.... The thing is, you aren't there to receive relief from that pain by the time it stops, you're dead.

Genocide is more like if your neighbor keeps stepping on your foot, dont just buy more icy hot, just kill your neighbor

well technically... you kill them, their family and all people of similar genetics or geographical location, because they stepped on your foot

No, the neighbor example was an example, illustrating what you do, where you represent your ethnic group and your neighbor represents another. In that example, killin their family and people of similar genetics means that instead of killing, say, all Spaniards, you'd kill all Spaniards, Portugese, French, Germans, Italians, Mexicans, Filipinos, etc.

Dont forget Primates, thier genetics are also close to our own as humans :|

The point of my comment wasn't numbers, it was that people are individuals, not clones with like minds and actions

Bad analogy, very bad one. Edit: It's not a bad one, it's not an analogy to genocide at all, because that analogy presents the killed as the true trouble makers and the killing as simply a radical way of stopping the "trouble makers".


Your neighbour keeps stepping on your foot. You are fed up and kill him, his family and all his relatives. That's genocide. One fails or is unwilling to locate the exact trouble maker(s), generalizes and then tries to eradicate the alleged trouble makers.

And even then one has to question, might there have been a reason for that neighbour to step on one's foot? Could it e. g. have been due to one punching that neighbour's face the whole time? Who is the real cause of the problem?

I fail to see how that is a bad analogy. There might be some cause behind the neighbor stepping on your foot, but generally humans have piss-poor memory for things, especially when they involve guilt. So, if you forget the cause of your neighbor stepping on your foot(you crushed his foot with a car, making his stance wider than he is used to or something), then it'd appear to you like he was at fault. If you think he's at fault due to your poor memory, then according to you, they are the troublemaker. It ain't right, but it works(ish).

Hell, it doesn't take long for a nation to forget the reasons behind certain problems, the Holocaust is the best example of this; scapegoating Jews for the problems caused by the previous government(s), after only 20 years. 20 years! That's nothing! That's an age a cat or dog can reach! That's the time span it takes to get a human to adulthood, that's zilch, 1/3 or 1/4 of the life expectancy of the 1st world!

People were anti-semitic long before the Weimar system. Hitler used the anti-semitic feelings to his own political ends and beyond.

Genocide might solve some of the problems experienced by those who carry out the genocide, but only at a massive cost, and it's practically impossible.

Uh, isn't that exactly what I said?

Roaming East's analogy presents genocide from a supporter point of view, not implying that RE is a supporter of it. I however tried to make an objective analogy.

Yes, it presents it from a supporter point of view, but that's often how people see it. It may not be reasonable, but it clearly happens often. You said it was a bad analogy, which I disagreed with. Sure, it doesn't go into detail, but people don't go into detail when they look for a scapegoat. His example presents it from the view of the supporter, because that is the logic he was using. A good example for a bad practice.