You now confront the basic problem of morality
(media.communities.win)
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Dude, I'm sorry that your English education has had gaps that lead you to make word choices that fail to properly communicate your ideas, but me pointing that out isn't being a prick. If you want to have a good faith discussion you shouldn't lash out when someone tells you why they misunderstood you.
You're also very clearly attached to the belief that the central statement of the piece is valid, and when presented with examples that challenge it, rather than showing why the example is invalid, you present an improperly constructed counter-example, or you conflate two similar but disparate concepts and act as if this proves your argument.
And stop acting like Utilitarianism is some fundamental philosophical law. I understand the appeal of Utilitarianism (and would consider myself to be a utilitarian, broadly speaking), but it's neither a complete moral system (it requires an underlying framework to assign values to actions), nor was it ever intended to be applied beyond the level of an individual judging his own actions, as when applied at a societal level it can very easily be used to justify heinous evil. Take a step back and look at the questions you're being asked without a utilitarian lens first; you might find they're not the questions you've been answering.
Here you go again - presented with a discussion prompting short text piece, you began with personal attacks and hostility and have continued ever since. Frankly it’s ironic you say:
Because that’s exactly what you’re doing. It’s an interesting piece to get the noggin joggin on such interesting subjects as have so far been merely scratched at here, yet you want to turn it into a personal “own” on a “midwit philosophy”, by….misreading people’s points, not answering their discussion prompting questions in good faith, and fixating on semantics and word choice instead of just accepting the reality that your failure to understand my opening reply is, perhaps fittingly to the conversation, a shared responsibility, and moving on in good faith.
As a sign of my good faith, I’ll explain what I thought was self-evident from all my previous comments, maybe then this can get back on track:
The thief who takes 1 dollar from 100 hungry mouths has captured the system to a far greater degree than the thief who takes 1 dollar from 100 tips left on the table at a fancy restaurant. Following the logic of the piece, this higher degree of capture would necessitate a higher degree of punishment (hence, logically, the prevalence of hand-removal in subsistence cultures for thieves, or the execution of cattle thieves, and the relative disappearance of those punishments as cultures develop/grow). Analogous to the example I laid out as a more clear replacement to your own
Your example wasn't more clear. It introduced/changed several variables and obfuscated the question (Whether punishment for cheating must increase as the prosperity of a society/organization increases.) When presented with a pair of examples where the only variable is the relative prosperity of the two societies, we both agree that the example with the less prosperous society ought to be punished more severely. You claim this follows the logic presented, but our conclusion directly contradicts the conclusion presented at the midpoint of the piece. Analysis of the rest of the logic in that paragraph is only useful to find where it is incorrect, as it produces an obviously incorrect conclusion.
Go fuck yourself. You're being disingenuous and you know it. Those two sentences are in separate paragraphs and are at literal opposite ends of my post. It's completely inappropriate and contrary to the idea of a good faith discussion to quote them that way. To this point I have made exactly two statements that could be reasonably construed as personal attacks. In the first, I mildly insulted your intelligence and suggested you find some better sources of literature and philosophy. This was at the conclusion of my first post. The second was when I just told you to go fuck yourself. Every other attack I've made has been on your actions or arguments (or those of the unnamed Destiny writer[s] responsible for the piece.)
You say I'm looking for an own, by which I assume you mean a minor error in logic through which I can justify dismissal of the piece. If this was the case, I would not have started my first post by attacking the foundation of the argument made by the piece, nor would I have challenge the central conclusions of the piece (literally, the conclusions in the middle of the piece, in this case.) You claim that I'm focusing on semantics in a discussion on logic, philosophy, and morality; a discussion where semantically incorrect arguments have no value. You claim I'm not engaging with the discussion questions in good faith. I've not answered a couple rhetorical or compound questions, and when I misunderstood a question, I explained the cause of my misunderstanding and answered the clarified question. You, on the other hand, have repeatedly misquoted me, engaged in personal attacks on my motives, and otherwise acted in and assumed bad faith. I'd say you'd get better discussion if you didn't, but seeing as how active I've been in this thread, maybe that's incorrect.