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As someone who's generally pretty morally relative, and abstractly, I tend to agree. But you miss the point. Call actions what you want but they will land you i
by dcow 4y ago
As someone who's generally pretty morally relative, and abstractly, I tend to agree. But you miss the point. Call actions what you want but they will land you in jail if you are a citizen of a society which considers them wrong and you are caught performing them. What's interesting in the US is that we acknowledge this limitation of the law and have an ethical escape hatch. The law does not convict you, a jury of your peers does. And they can decide what you did is not wrong even though the law says it's not allowed. Unfortunately (for sympathizers and for your argument in this context) in this case the jury very much decided that the evidence presented in court proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the actions, which the law says are not allowed, were confirmed as wrong (the law applied correctly) and subsequently worthy of punishment. So arguing from a stance of moral relativism is a logical non sequitur and simply not relevant. If you don't think DPR actions were wrong go change the law or somehow move him to your society where he's a hero. Don't pine over how terrible this man's life now is because "he was just a drug lord on the digital streets and didn't technically kill anybody and people use facebook to sell drugs too see this guy is no worse than zuck and and who says breaking laws is even wrong anyway???".
- kragen 4y ago
- dcow 4y agoI actually wrote up a detailed response to your original comment but you appear to not be arguing in good faith after the addition of your last 3 paragraphs. Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about or if you do you're not interested in a real rebuttal and have opted instead for the word soup let's feed it to GPT at best call it a fallacy but in reality just some lame snide attempt at internet points. All I'll say is this: I originally replied to sneak who rhetorically questioned whether illegal actions are always wrong. That's called moral relativism and I explained that when you live in a society your ethics are governed to some extent by your peers. So, while you can believe and in large part do whatever you want, illegal actions don't somehow become ethical because you found a few people who happen to be interested in challenging the moral framework behind the laws in question. I find it quite useless and unproductive to bring such a juvenile response to a serious discussion because it takes things to a place where you can just say whatever you want and be right, as evidenced by your inclusion of GPT-2.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- worik 4y ago> rhetorically questioned whether illegal actions are always wrong. That's called moral relativism It could be called "moral relativism". But I do not think it really is. The moral content of my actions is entirely independent of the legality of my actions. There is correlation, a lot of bad things and few good things are illegal. But legality does not imply good and vise versa.
- dcow 4y agoI understand that. My argument is that, practically, we're talking about the past actions of a certain individual within a certain legal context on a social scale where societal justice has already been served so you necessarily have to tie the two together otherwise society falls apart. What DPR did is not allowed by the laws of the land in which he did it. Therefore it is logical to assert that his actions are unwanted in that society. It's a bad idea to do illegal things and get caught. The semantics of it doesn't change the principle.
- sneak 4y ago> What DPR did is not allowed by the laws of the land in which he did it. Therefore it is logical to assert that his actions are unwanted in that society. I don't think that logically follows, either.
- dcow 4y agoIt does because he committed a crime and is rotting in jail. That’s literally what that means. You can disagree forever about whether you specifically would accept his actions in some ideal society in your head, but that doesn't change reality. Simply, nobody is discussing the your imagination.
- sneak 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwaway654329 4y agoHis prison conditions seem to extremely bad and your response is to argue he had a fair trial by a jury of his peers. I wonder if you can see that one does not relate to the other? He should be punished by being incarcerated, not by other prisoners during incarceration, no? I would dispute that the mere fact that he did not have a jury trial where he lived was unfair and an indication that he did not actually have a jury of his peers. He was arrested in San Francisco and tried in New York City. Those are different worlds on technology and drug issues.