In preparation for an upcoming post, I am asking the community to present me with their best moral dilemmas. The post is to be named "debunking moral relativism," and so I feel that if I am going to try and convince people that there is a definitive right and wrong, and that everything is black and white, as opposed to shades of grey, than I will need to answer some tough moral dilemmas to be successful.
It is as simple as leaving a comment where you provide a situation in which deciding what is right or wrong is very difficult. I do not know how many will be presented, but I do know that I do not intend to answer hundreds. Instead, I will allow the community to upvote their favourite ones to determine three clear winners. So please, after you provide your own, upvote any others that you consider to be very challenging. If there are not enough votes to choose three clear winners, I will use my own upvotes to select the ones that I deem to be the best.
I am no t here about the contest, sorry for bothering you with another matter rather than the point you had in mind while making this post.
I just spent almost one hour reading how you argued with almost everyone about defending steemit´s integrity and our ethics while participating in a contest. I don´t have to tell the post I am talking about, you know which one is it.
I have to tell you, you just became straight away one of my best buddies here on steemit and I don´t even know you. People like you, mate, is what steemit needs more if we want to keep growing in a healthy way. You just got a new follower, always glad to see a fellow person who stands for his ideals and doesn´t let greed corrupt him, i identify with your train of thought.
If you ever need a Robin to one of your Batman quests hit me up.
Oh, and by the way, that moral dilemma you were talking about? Yeah, you protagonized it last week, glad to see you teach a lesson to one or two peeps out there.
Now you make me feel bad Lol. I can already see that the same thing is happening again, with the same whale helping to cheat, only they're trying to be smarter about it this time. I decided I am not even going to say anything this time because I was so disappointed with the lack of people who were willing to try and rectify the situation.
It's encouraging to hear your words nonetheless, but our like is heavily outnumbered here, and it's just becoming an impossible battle to win. I don't refer to the competition there, but to abuse of the platform by cunts who already have more than enough money as it is. You would think in a rewards-based economy, it would be about rewarding others. But, I think we got the name wrong. This isn't a reward economy. It is simply an economy, like any other, and ultimately, it is powered by greed.
If you are going to call out abuse, then know that it will come at a sacrifice. If you are constantly calling out the most influential people on the platform for their undesirable actions, then you will have far less support, and earn far less money, regardless of how good your content is. So, you should decide before opening your mouth, what is more important to you? Doing what is right, or not pissing off the people who can best impact your wallet positively during your time here. Based on your words, I would guess it is also the former for you. But, I will think no less of you if you opt for the latter. I don't know anyone's financial situations here, and the system, Steemit included, has a way of suppressing people's desires to do better, because they have mouths to feed etc.
Anyway, I'm not sure if you needed that bit of advice or if you were already aware of this, but thought I would give you the heads up just in case. Some times I do wonder if I could have done a hell of a lot better here by keeping my mouth shut. But that's never really been me, so I try not to dwell on it.
Thanks a lot for showing me there is another decent Steemian out there though. I have followed you back and will see what you're about soon.
You are a sociopathic warmonger who can't stand the thought of not finishing a war your father started and pulled out of a decade before you were in the oval office. You can fabricate stories about an evil middle eastern dictator, but it will cost potentially millions of lives and further destabilize the entire region. What do you do? Stay out of it or go all in?
My personal experience when I was 12 years old.
You're in a supermarket in a part of town you don't frequent and see your father with several children, a shopping cart and a woman who is not your mother. He doesn't see you. Do you tell your mother?
No. But you do tell your dad. :)
Well, there's the classic Batman/Superman dilemma.
Say a small airplane with three passengers has lost control and is free falling directly toward a busy intersection.
Neither hero has time to stop the plane; the only options are to redirect it to crash into an empty field, or to save the passengers.
Superman, in keeping with his "must save people" character, would pluck the three passengers out and let the plane crash into the intersection, killing many more.
Batman, with his "cold logic" attitude, would redirect the plane to crash in the field, killing the three passengers, but saving the masses below.
Which is the more moral decision? Could you willingly let people die (right in front of you, mind you -- people you could hear screaming for your help) in order to save possibly 50 others?
Or would you save the passengers' lives - people with parents who love them and kids that depend on them, people with terror in their eyes and tears on their cheeks - and let 50 or so unnamed people die?
Bonus conundrum: Those passengers will have a slow, terrifying build-up to their deaths. They'll have time to scream and pray for help and feel that gut-wrenching sense of loss knowing that they'll never get the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. They'll also have time to curse you for not saving them and beg you to change your mind.
The people on the ground (at the intersection) would never see the plane coming. They would just be going about their business and then boom, dead.
Does that affect your decision at all?
Trying to stop the plane until the last moment. As you sad, you can't do it, so the 3 people would probably die, but this is how I would do it. How about you?
So you would redirect the plane and try to stop it before it hit the field?
That would be a good option. But yea, the three would die. At least, though, they'd have hope up until the end. Instead of just being like, "sorry you're gonna die, I'll just be over here watching." Ha!
If I had time to stop and think about my decision, I honestly don't know which I would choose. But if forced to make a split-second decision, I would reroute the plane and let those three die.
Moral Delima- You have a close elderly family member that is very ill and possible treatments for the illness are very costly and at best the survival rate is only 33% with treatment. Paying for the treatment will require you to use 100% of your kid's college fund and some of our retirement plan.
Do you pay for the treatment?
You run a large company and one of your employees an accountant, who has worked for you for years and whom you have grown attached to, you have caught stealing money from the company hurting not your own financial well being but that of the shareholders. However when you confront him he explains that he needed to steal the money to pay for cancer treatment for his 8 year old daughter and that if you fire him there is no way that he will be able to support his family. Is it better to fire him since he has proven to be less than trustworthy in the interest of the company and its shareholders? Or do you let him keep his job because it was a noble cause, and he had proven himself trustworthy before now? He stole $ 300,000 USD from the companies quarterly profits which were $ 5 million USD not an insignificant amount. also if you do fire him do you also get the police involved?
Why use a hypothetical when the world is full of real examples? The Syrian civil war may be a great place to examine our values. The current crisis has been on-going for 5 years with ever-increasing misery on the Syrian people. The choices and possible consequences are:
Join with China and Russia in supporting the Assad government to crush the rebels and ISIS decisively. This action will definitely bring order to the war-torn region. Syrians will be able to return home from the far-flung refugee camps around the world. Of course, those suspected of rebel activities will be summarily executed in the thousands, but thousands more will be able to lead a stable life, once Assad government re-establishes order through fear.
Support the rebels in opposition to Russia and China. This will escalate the conflict even more. There is a potential for direct conflict with Russia and China resulting in direct harm to our interests. The conflict will likely continue for decades (taking the Vietnam War as paradigm) with concurrent miseries all around. Even if the rebel faction triumphs, the establishment of a stable government will take even more years, further draining our resources. The shrills of nationalism will continue to escalate in our societies, if we continue to bear the cost of the conflict, which may destabilize our societies. But if the West is true to their principles of "democracy," "rule of law," "human rights," then this will have to be the principled decision.
Refuse to intervene following the principles of international law, as set by the Peace of Westphalia. This is also a principled approach, if one is an adamant legalist of the international sort.
You're not wrong, but I think you would be better served choosing something hypothetical, or at least, something that isn't so utterly complex. I don't think there is a single person on Steemit who could possibly be fully informed as to what is really going on in Syria, because there are multiple agendas at work here, and the whole situation is steeped in misinformation and disinformation.
I could not answer this, because I simply do not know everything about what is going on over there, and, I feel it would be wholly arrogant for me to attempt to offer a solution to something I don't even understand to any degree of competence.
I suppose so, though life is about making difficult choices with limited information.
Then how about a scenario from Mass Effect: the moral rationale for the Genophage?
I'm not familiar with it, but sure. It already sounds interesting.
You have a brother and a sister (they are twins). You have to shoot one of them in order for the other two to survive. Who do you pick? (this is the most interesting I heard)
And a personal one, real life example: You and your wife are working in a poor country and you have the chance to work for more money in a developed country but you have to leave your kid behind (with his grandparents for example). You know that your grandparents are not the best at growing a kid. The pro is that you can offer anything the kid would need, the con is that you will not be around, to love and educate him. What would you choose, stay with him and be poor or leave and risk that your kid will grow without his parents love and education?
Interesting examples. Could you clarify something on the first one, however. When you say that the other two will survive, who is the other two? If one is dead, there is surely only one left?
You kill one in order for you and the other one to survive. If you don't do it, you and both of them die.
When is it ok to kill a cop?
Let us assume that you are, for the most part, law abiding.
You haven't done anything worse than forget to pay the parking meter in a timely fashion.
The police have murdered your friend.
(yes, murder, as in planned, premeditated...)
It is more than one cop, and at least a DA.
And now the police are sniffing you out to see if you know anything.
Of course, if this goes to trial, it will be your word against theirs.
What if, all of your life, you've followed a personnal code of honor.
Always guided instinctively by an inner sense of truth and a real desire to be in the present moment helping out. But what if you had the opportunity to help out in the virtual world, making a difference in the present moment for someone . But not in a way that's visually tangible. Are you really making a difference? Still , who is there to say that the growing entity of cyberexistence isn't "existing" as well.. Therefore is there a right and wrong between acting in one world or the other. The dilemma is simple. Two worlds coexist , one gets more lovin' one gets neglected, are there any grey areas?
A man whose father's property was stolen versus a man who in good faith bought the property in question from the now-deceased thief and improved it: How do we resolve this property rights dispute?
This is a fucking good one you have here. My initial response was something that can only be described as a brainfart. Lol. Thanks for sharing.
Unfortunately, yours did not get any votes. But, I find it to be one of the most difficult ones here, so I am going to include it too. I can't be arsed doing math twice when there is no good reason to, but I will be calculating what is owed to who after the follow-up post is done, and I will give you a share of the profits too.