IMO, developing conciousness of the society is far more important than choosing the lesser evil.
Also the bigger evil, is only evil in your view. And letting the course run, is one of the best ways for that big evil to show people why it is bigger evil.
It’s highly context dependent.
In medicine, you face this question all the time. Will a surgery do more harm than good. Can I just leave that person suffering, or should I roll the dice with this surgery? It’s a proper dilemma to ponder. How about this medication, that improves the patient’s quality of life in one area, but causes some side effects that are less horrifying than the underlying condition. Sounds like a win, but is it really?
In various technical contexts, you often find yourself comparing two bad options and pick the one that is “less bad”. Neither of them are evil, good, great or even acceptable. They’re both bad, and you have to pick one so that the machine can work for a while longer until you get the real spare parts and fix it properly. For example, you may end up running a water pump at lower speed for the time being. It wears down the bearing, moves less water, consumes too much energy etc, but it’s still better than shutting the pump down for two weeks.
In various technical contexts
You probably do this all the time without thinking much about it. For example, updating mains-powered devices without UPS. There’s a chance the power goes out and something gets screwed up.
Yeah. Roll the dice, hope for the best and all that. If power goes out, you could be looking at several days of troubleshooting, but it is unlikely to happen.
On the other hand, you could get that UPS, but that’s going to take time, and the server really needs those security patches today. Are you going to roll that dice instead and hope nobody tries to exploit a new vulnerability discovered this morning?
Either way, it’s pretty bad.
“lesser risk” is a lot different than “lesser evil”
so is “higher cost”
yeah I was unimpressed with those examples. usually its something where you have no real choice.
Yeah, but depending on where you live that would be a freak accident and not something worth considering. In my entire life I have never experienced a mains power outage, it’s not really a thing in Germany
In medicine you chose the best option not the lesser evil
The way I see it, that’s just different wording for the same thing. More patient friendly, for sure.
If there really are only harmful options, for sure choose the least harm. But you have to make sure that you’re not ignoring an option which involves no harm.
The problem really is when people assume there’s only two choices. If you dont like the choices, be creative and come up with something else.
I mean for most things there are almost unlimited choices. One can go mad in response to something. So just want to add to not assume there are only two effective choices and be creative to look for another possible effective choice. I mean if you find a new choice to avoid a choice that you can see will have the same result of the first choice then making the new choice is effectively the same as the other choice.
I’d caveat that if you didnt know the new choice would result in the same thing as the first choice, you still gained new knowledge by trying it out. We also can’t know all the answers all the time.
There is no such thing as good or evil. There’s only the things that make us feel good and things that do not. For some people, the things that make them feel good are also things that make others feel good; but there’s a lot of people who only feel good by causing others to feel bad.
The only thing that matters is balancing what makes you feel better with the things that make the people you rely on feel better.
Depends on the context, but almost always a strawman imo.
Evil is simpler and easier to pull off than good (because you don’t have to value everyone in your equation), so “reasonable” compromises with evil compounded enough times leads to some pretty evil outcomes.
There is always the option to not pick.
Choosing not to act is still making a choice and may still result in a negative outcome. It’s the classic trolley problem. While you may not cause harm through an active choice, your inaction can still lead directly to a negative outcome.
I don’t remember the trolley problem being a question with a right and a wrong answer.
One of the issues the Trolley Problem explores is people’s differing willingness to allow harm versus cause it. And that can hold even when the level of harm caused by inaction is significantly higher than what is caused by taking action. E.g. If your personal philosophy dictates that killing someone is always wrong, does it hold if your inaction causes 5 deaths, 10, 50? What if we start tinkering with the people dying? Would you kill a 90 year old man to save a train full of children? The Trolley Problem is really just a starting point to examine that dichotomy between causing harm and allowing harm and just how permeable the line between them can be when you start changing the conditions. Attaching other moral choices to the problem is one way to use the problem to explore a set of beliefs.
“Allow harm”
Harm was going to happen no matter what you do in the trolley problem. There is no situation where harm does not happen, but there is a situation where you directly are causing harm.
If you give 100 different variations of the problem, I’ll answer 100 different ways, because 100 different questions were asked. Almost none of them actually having a real world application, because there are very few situations in life where a 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc option does not exist.
Personally, if I could go the rest of my life without hearing about the trolley problem that’d be great actually.
Its usually used by more evil evildoers trying to paint themselves as less evil than their (real or made up) opposition, while advocating for evil. I think its a desparation move by villains who got found out.
Or arrogance and hubris of villains in politics, painting themselves as the lesser evil while aligned with their opposition against the voters they hsve contempt for.
Hey you’re finally getting it I see.
Finally is not accurate, I have known this my entire life and for over 16 years have been evangela sizing about the need for better opposition politicians offering a new deal rather than plutocratic rot led by the most unpopular candidates they could possibly find. Unpopular and candidates not fit for the moment. Everyone knows they are being screwed if not by whom. It has long been clear either the Democrats channel that anger or the Republicans will. The Democrats refused so now the Republicans will. And those Democrats are blaming everybody else. But they knew the situation and refused to change their strategy written in 1990.
https://hexbear.net/comment/6470637
You’re the “western governments vs eastern governments” racist guy. Do you finally get that you were fucking wrong?
Says the brigading tanky stroking off Russia and China.
Your argument is too stupid to refute, only a total fucking moron would want China or Russia’s government, get the fuck out of here.
A friend of mine puts it this way: “I don’t vote for who’s turn it is to lead the KKK either.”
The day the KKK has control over your friend’s day today existence, that will be a relevant policy.
I mean, couldn’t we all just join the KKK and vote in a more moderate grand dragon?
There is something to risk reduction, but it’s more about voting strategically, if you have a chance to sway the election it makes sense to vote in arisk reductive manner from a practical standpoint, however, There’s also something to be said about voting for a marxist canidate not because they have a good chance of getting elected but to show support for a marxist party. To make it more clear people support them. The lesser evil concept in us democracy is stupid to begin with because a. in the presidential election the majority of the population has bascially no effect on the system if you live in california they are going to vote blue if you live in texas tehy are giong to vote red. As such ti doesnt’ really matter. It also assumes the reason for voting is to get people elected. Which as a revolutionary marxist it should be more a means to an end regardless. You vote to raise awareness of your cause and to create solidarity. If you are voting in an electino you mathematically have virtually zero chance of swaying it makes more sense to vote for a marxist canidate in the hopes that if enough people vote for it it might show up in statistics and introduce people to the cause.
Yes, of course. That always assumes a lack of good choice (i.e. no choice also being a bad option).
Do not compare evils, lest you be tempted to cleave with the least of them!
–Victor Saltzpyre
(A raw line probably inspired by somebody else lol)
It’s always odd to me when words develop parallel but distinct meanings based on context. Like, I know “to cleave to” something is to attach to it, but it trips me up (esp. in a Warhammer context where Saltzpyre would be hanging out) since I default to “he was cleaved in twain”.
As with most other English oddities, I assume this is holdover from my ancestors treating other languages like swap meets.
I think it’s usually used to create a false dichotomy so that stockholm syndrome victims can feel good about supporting their abusers.
I use it as an excuse to view the average idiot for what they are. A slow loss is still a loss, but stupid people have convinced themselves that it’s a win. I’m glad I’m not like them.
The concept of the “lesser evil” operates as a manipulative technique, much like the neoliberal slogan “there is no alternative” (TINA). In both cases, the spectrum of alternatives is artificially narrowed to create the illusion of fewer choices than actually exist. For example, while the United States has roughly fifteen multi-state political parties, the lesser evil strategy deliberately implies there are only two.
No, the First-Past-The-Post system + media polarisation makes it a two party system. If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don’t dissappear. The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.
You are intentionally shutting out reality and choosing to believe that third party candidates are viable but they absolutely are not
You are intentionally shutting out the meaning of my comment.
Which is? If it’s not trying to convince people to piss into the void by voting third party, I’m all ears
Back in the day, ex-slave Frederick Douglas had to choose between supporting a Presidential candidate who was for immediate abolition of slavery or helping a wishy-washy liberal who wouldn’t come out in favor of abolition. Douglas chose to support the liberal because Douglas thought the liberal had a better chance of winning the election. Douglas had to weight the odds and decided that it was better to have a President who might listen to the abolition cause than it was to be ‘moral’ and lose the election.
That’s not so much “lesser evil” as “achievable good”.
Tom-A-to, tom-AH-to.
Moral relativism is consequentialist nonsense, and like most consequentialist nonsense, easy to abuse to justify evil acts. I can’t agree to that.
Back in the day, philosophers would stand in the public square and debate any one as an equal.
Today, ‘philosophers’ hide behind specialized lingo only they understand.
And don’t say I could look it up. Einstein said that if a scientist couldn’t explain what he was doing to a five year old the scientist was a fraud.
Okay, five-year-old:
Doing good is important. Sometimes, you want do do a lot of good but feel like you can only do a little good. That’s okay! Do what you can.
Sometimes you may think it’s okay to be naughty, because you know other kids who are very naughty all the time. But it’s still not okay to be naughty, even a little bit.
My father is going to beat up my mom if he finds out that she took his drug money to buy food.
Are you saying I shouldn’t lie? That it’s more important to tell the truth than to protect my mom from a beating?
False dichotomy, those aren’t your only choices.
Further, lying isn’t automatically wrong. Deceiving or otherwise inhibiting a hostile, evil entity is virtuous.
Perfect example since slavery wasn’t banned until the slave states straight up declared war on the free states. You’ll never get a wishy-washy candidate to oppose institutional violence. Only direct action will end injustice
It’s a manipulative fallacy. Humanity has the total ability to control its destiny within what’s physically possible. People presenting two options and demanding a choice of one discount every possibly out of an infinite set of possibilities except those two.
See: horse image
