3 ms·
> I don't think a single person would believe otherwise, It depends. Saving "a hundred" or a "a thousand" lives seems "doable" by a normal person as a result
by paganel 5y ago
> I don't think a single person would believe otherwise,
It depends. Saving "a hundred" or a "a thousand" lives seems "doable" by a normal person as a result of a conscious, "moral" act, saving "millions" devolves into messianism, and as such it's not the job of essays or of simple, logical human thinking to talk/write about it. I know that the author doesn't insist on that aspect but in real life quantitate differences turn into qualitative differences most of the time.
- Kim_Bruning 5y agoWith growing populations, I'm not sure trying to save a million lives is THAT special anymore. Definitely still fairly awesome, but not Messiah level awesome. I think eg. President Zelensky (the buck stops with him for >40M souls) would be very surprised to learn of his sudden deification. There are actually probably quite a number of rather less spectacular (eg. bureaucratic, military, logistics, sysop, ...) jobs where you might routinely touch 1M+ people these days, in some narrow but nevertheless (up to) life-critical ways. This does mean one might need to take ethics into account in situations that seem far removed from the coal face, typically whilst pushing dusty papers around; lest you end up creating catch 22's for the people in the trenches. Everyone has stories about things like unethical corporate behavior. At that kind of scale, it makes more sense to build systems (governments/corporations/foundations/smart mobs/...) that are somehow intrinsically ethical or at very least inspire ethical behavior in their members.