Oh geez. So many pages to respond too, lets see if I can avoid wall-of-text.
BLANDCorporatio wrote:Mmkay, let's adjust this analogy then. You put someone in a coma to do bypass surgery on them, and they wake up very grateful to you. Very, very, ridiculously grateful. But it appears that it can wear off.
Gratitude does not cover someone being willing to go kill their family for your benefit. The person brought back is not the same person. It's a doppelganger.
crazyguy_co wrote:Isn't that the very defenition of evil? I mean its not like real evil is intentionally evil... they just put "pragmatic" over "moral"
Evil is selfish and unconcerned with the price one's actions has on others. Good is concerned with the welfare of others and takes actions that benefit others, as well as and sometimes at the expense of, one's own benefit. The good/evil question here is, does decrypting Jack benefit Jack to the point that he would rather be decrypted than not? If you were Jack would you prefer to be decrypted in the same situation?
BLANDCorporatio wrote:As for the second, murder is not murder when you can, and do it with the express intention to, bring the "dead" back.
Irrelevant. Redeeming a deed does not exempt the deed. If I resolve to steal something with the intent of returning it later, that doesn't change the fact that I willfully took something away from someone else, to my personal gain. Nor does returning it repay for the person's lack of access to the stolen good, or any unknown consequences thereof. Steal someone's golf club, and he can't go golfing with the CEO, but if he had gone, he would have gotten a promotion due to some comment he would have made during the game. Likely? of course not, but the point is, we have no idea what the ultimate ramifications our actions can have on another person's future. But when we act against another for our personal gain, then we are responsible for all potential consequences, not just the immediate obvious consequence. And again, killing someone and then decrypting them changes them. This is hardly returning something in the same or better condition from
their standpoint.
Sixty wrote:No, Stanley was saying it from off screen. In tBfGK when someone speaks on panel they have no border to their text box, when they speak off-panel they do. (Now in book 2 they always have a border, it's just thicker when someone says something off-panel, see the Dittomancer's "I'll quadruple'em." off-panel remark here
http://www.erfworld.com/2009/11/book-2- ... 93-page-8/) Parson says "Um... Yeah. Look, I know you're--" but the other text was Stanley's.
sigh. You're right. You're right. But the tempo still throws me off. "I thought." in one panel leads directly to the next sentence, so since the tempo is the same, it sounds like it was from the same person. But, ignoring the tempo makes it clear you're right.
BLANDCorporatio wrote:The big thing about decryption is how it changes a unit's loyalty to Wanda, and this is where most of the moral iffyness comes from.
There is no moral ambiguity. Every single system, be it philosophical or religious, that seeks to define morality has a rule that states, in one way or another, "Don't do to some other what you would not like done to you." Thus, to argue that decrypting is moral, you first have to adopt the platform that you would like to be decrypted against your will. This isn't the obvious paradox that it first appears. After all, when you were a kid you were probably disciplined against your will, but at least in some cases you now probably glad you were. So it could be argued, but you would have to base the argument on someone one day being glad to be decrypted rather than being saved, if there were no MC component or after the MC wears off.
BLANDCorporatio wrote:You could say, because the patient consented to the operation, but sometimes the patient is brought in a state where they can't express consent. This is then deferred to living wills (new, rare), relatives and loved ones, or indeed for life-threatening emergencies a procedure is just carried out because it's the right thing to do.
Consent is only semi-relevant in this case. The reason it is good is because it is done for the patient's benefit. Consent is assumed if the person is incapable of speaking for themselves and did not leave some kind of written notice at the hospital to abstain from all treatment.
Somehow, it looks like almost all my responses are directed at BC this time. Seriously, I wasn't picking on you or anything.
I seem to have failed to capture the quote, but someone made the argument that the MC aspects of decrypting is moral because everyone is under MC to some point or another. To this I also say BUSHWAH! There is no equivalency to right and wrong. Something is not ok for me to do just because it is ok for someone else. If I make the argument that all kids are disciplined by their parents, that does not give me the right to go smack someone else's kid around too. In Erf, everyone is popped with loyalty to the one that popped them to varying degrees. True, but again, if you can't prove it is to the unit's ultimate benefit to be decrypted, then you can't make a moral argument.
