UKMT February 2017 - Welcome to Tiny Train World

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Regarde Aduck: Oct 19, 2012; c l o u d k i t t e n; Grimey Drawer

It's really simple. You shouldn't feel particularly patriotic about the UK. It's done lots of bad poo poo, is not sorry and is currently doubling down on making everyone unhappy.

But that doesn't mean you should go around calling for its destruction either. It's why I found Scottish nationalists so distasteful at the height of the independence vote. There were lots of people openly happy about the "destruction of the UK". But as with any destruction, it means people are going to get hosed over. Be careful what you wish for. The UK getting its "just desserts" will also mean more strife for the poorest in our society. Most likely more death as people fall down the cracks.

Or to put it another way: Hating your own nation is basically making GBS threads where you sleep.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 14:41

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# ? May 10, 2024 20:32

Private Speech: Mar 30, 2011; I HAVE EVEN MORE WORTHLESS BEANIE BABIES IN MY COLLECTION THAN I HAVE WORTHLESS POSTS IN THE BEANIE BABY THREAD YET I STILL HAVE THE TEMERITY TO CRITICIZE OTHERS' COLLECTIONS

IF YOU SEE ME TALKING ABOUT BEANIE BABIES, PLEASE TELL ME TO

EAT. SHIT.

Fangz posted:

Fun fact: the word for 'Britain' and 'England' are the same in Chinese.

Nahh that's the same thing, just a common expression for Britain and there's another formal one for the UK.

It's like people from the US calling Britain England.

e: dammit beaten. how many people here tried to learn mandarin chinese

Private Speech fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 14:42

marktheando: Nov 4, 2006

It's not just a London thing. Most people across the country have never seen NI banknotes before and will stare wide eyed at them and won't believe they are real money.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 14:42

GEORGE W BUSHI: Jul 1, 2012

marktheando posted:

It's not just a London thing. Most people across the country have never seen NI banknotes before and will stare wide eyed at them and won't believe they are real money.

Scottish bank notes got me enough suspicious looks whenever I'd try to pay with them in Wales after returning from York. I had no idea NI bank notes were a thing.

Baron Corbyn posted:

英國 - the United Kingdom
英格蘭 - England

The latter only really gets used for stuff like the England football team and the former is just a shortening of the latter but the distinction does exist. There is an actual word for the UK that isn't derived from England but no fucker uses it and I have no idea what it is.

I just looked it up and it's 大英聯合王國

Which I suppose also has the character for England and sort of implies that Brittany is little England?

# ? Feb 16, 2017 14:45

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

marktheando posted:

It's not just a London thing. Most people across the country have never seen NI banknotes before and will stare wide eyed at them and won't believe they are real money.

Well, they aren't legal tender so the wide-eyed starers aren't completely wrong...

# ? Feb 16, 2017 14:47

kustomkarkommando: Oct 22, 2012

Baron Corbyn posted:

Scottish bank notes got me enough suspicious looks whenever I'd try to pay with them in Wales after returning from York. I had no idea NI bank notes were a thing.

Danske bank bought out one of the regional banks not that long ago and now if I go to England and give someone danske bank branded sterling they thing I'm up to something

This is why I horde English notes even if the cold dead eyes of queen haunt my dreams

# ? Feb 16, 2017 14:49

kustomkarkommando: Oct 22, 2012

We did plastic fivers first! And they where see through!

# ? Feb 16, 2017 14:50

Private Speech: Mar 30, 2011; I HAVE EVEN MORE WORTHLESS BEANIE BABIES IN MY COLLECTION THAN I HAVE WORTHLESS POSTS IN THE BEANIE BABY THREAD YET I STILL HAVE THE TEMERITY TO CRITICIZE OTHERS' COLLECTIONS

IF YOU SEE ME TALKING ABOUT BEANIE BABIES, PLEASE TELL ME TO

EAT. SHIT.

Baron Corbyn posted:

Which I suppose also has the character for England and sort of implies that Brittany is little England?

Places that were important in the 18th century were given their current chinese names first, so it went England -> the UK (basically 'the united kingdom of greater england').

e: Also there's another (phonetic) expression for Brittany/Britain/Great Britain which is:

大不列颠 - Great Buliedian (GB)

不列颠 - Buliedian (Britain)

布列塔尼 - Bulietani (Brittany)

Private Speech fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 14:50

big scary monsters: Sep 2, 2011; -~Ｓｋｕｌｌｗａｖｅ~-

jBrereton posted:

Maybe they're Jacobites, or the name is an obliquely egalitarian message about the Citizen as King.

This reminded me of the actual, real-life, mordern-day Jacobite I met one time while I was out for a walk in Irvine. He was extremely angry about Douglases, let me tell you.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 14:53

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

Fangz posted:

Fun fact: the word for 'Britain' and 'England' are the same in Chinese.

Well yeah, they're smart enough to know that the provinces don't matter :smug:

Now excuse me, this pig head won't gently caress itself

# ? Feb 16, 2017 15:01

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

big scary monsters posted:

This reminded me of the actual, real-life, mordern-day Jacobite I met one time while I was out for a walk in Irvine. He was extremely angry about Douglases, let me tell you.

What were his thoughts on Franz of Bavaria?

# ? Feb 16, 2017 15:02

big scary monsters: Sep 2, 2011; -~Ｓｋｕｌｌｗａｖｅ~-

Guavanaut posted:

What were his thoughts on Franz of Bavaria?

I'm not sure, he spent most of his time talking about Sherrifmuir. I assume he'd welcome seeing dachshunds replace the corgis at Balmoral though.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 15:11

JFairfax: Oct 23, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

I am convinced that to Americans, London = England.

Unless you meet one of the ones who is like 'oh my grandfather was from Cornwall'.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 15:15

namesake: Jun 19, 2006; "When I was a girl, around 12 or 13, I had a fantasy that I'd grow up to marry Captain Scarlet, but he'd be busy fighting the Mysterons so I'd cuckold him with the sexiest people I could think of - Nigel Mansell, Pat Sharp and Mr. Blobby."

Here's a really nice summary of the attitudes the left has been taking over Brexit and we've been doing in the thread:

quote:

What strikes me about conversations on social media regarding brexit is that there are three diffrent categories of contribution- not strands of commentary, but comments- the Entrenched Lexiteer, the Moral Remainer and the Exhausted and Confused Naive Appeal to Unity. 3 different comments being repeated over and over again with almost no capacity for nuance or development and with almost no exceptions.

I won't identify their content now because that's just an oportunity to return to the leftist death spiral that is the hideous 'debate' on this and every other topic which presently divides us. I want to try and find a way to pull us out of that death spiral. The decision to boycott the anti-Trump demonstration called principally by forces from the traditional far left and the subsequent decision by those forces to set up an alternative campaign is an extemely alarming sign of deterioration at what may be the most crucial momment in recent history.

Some people may take the attitude that the root issue is simply the history of abuse in the SWP. I don't buy that. I don't believe the SWP was the only target of sentiment to exclude forces involved in the formation of that demonstration and if it was, boycotting a demonstration would be an utterly unprecedented response in this country and one which doesn't measure rationally up against the war crimes, political butchery and authoritarianism actively participated in by the Labour Party and the communist Party for generations- with loud and vicious denunciations being carried out against these organisations ON demonstrations significant figures of these groups were visibly leading.

It also shows that the schism is not unique to the question of Brexit, and that the various schisms contribute to eachother and begin to draw a broader picture of an underlying rupture in the left- which itself suggests a still more fundemental rupture in the reality from which politics emerges. I thought perhaps thinking about the social media debate as a symptom of our condition, rather than taking the attitude that social media, or etiquette or even the ideas expessed are the sickness itself, might be a way to help understand the crisis oft the left.

Although they are utterly at odds with eachother it's become possible to identify some broad features the diffrence types of commentary have in common. They ALL claim that every other strand of opinion is bullying and abusive. They ALL claim that the left is inward looking and isolated. They ALL claim to be speaking in defence of principles of internationalism and anti-racism. Apart from the specific arguments being made, what really separates the two strands of argument- which extends also to the response to the Syrian war- is that the lexit left tends to claim the monopoly on revolutionary politics and the remainers tend to claim moral authority. Both sides claim the other is not in touch with the working class. This ironically is the key, but I'll come back to that in a momment.

Not much can be learned from this apart from that the arguments are rife with contradictions and inconsistencies and above all characature- and I say this very delibrately- NOT straw-figures. Straw figuring is creating a false enemy you can defeat, what has been going on in these bust ups is more a tendency to amplify the biggest problems of the other side in general, which is interesting because the main effect seems to be to construct a more rational system of ideas in the opposing contributions than is actually identifiable. The destructiveness of these debates emerges, I think, from the urgency we feel to actually understand the rupture itself and our deep unpreparedness to do so. Its reasuring to impute on your opponent a straightforward ideological break with our tradition or principles because it converesly reassures us that we know where WE are and where WE are going, but these charactures are not accurate, they conceal the disorientation.This is surely because of a lack of an intelligence of the class and it's condition.

The cheap bullshit version of this argument is that leftists are all just unbearably middle class and dont do proper working class jobs anymore or arent sufficiently northern. This is nonsense. Im not even going to bother to refute it. Even were it true Fredrick Engels was the poshest motherfucker ever to ponder equality while a domestic servant scrubbed the skid marks out of his kecks, but he still managed to do some of the most insightful work of patient documentation of the material and social conditions of the working class ever seen. Regardless, posing the issue in this way is to massively underestimate it. We're confronted with a class which has had its traditions of self consciousness brutally smashed. However working class leftists are, what does it matter if the class doesn't know itself?

After the split with the SWP it's various diaspora seemed to, separately, agree that this was a thing and that major work was needed to overcome this lack of an adequate theory of the present. That work has been stumbled through with various momments of insight, but ultimately with little that really seemed to answer the vast dirth of real understanding. The catch 22 of it all is that understanding doesn't emerge in the abstract, just through thinking about it really hard, but through the active theorising of workers experiences of struggle- and struggle has been thin. Progressively less thin, and the sparks begining to fly in new sectors of the economy have been exciting and promising- but with the advent of the referendum and Trump's victory and the aftermath of the Arab spring, events have over taken us.

So to return to the original question, what I'm tentatively suggesting is that this un-inteligence of the class is what is producing the grinding, dispiriting schisms in the left. In the absence of a class that is achieving self consciousness, and that retains almost no sustaining memory of its emergence in previous struggles, the left is resorting too two broad strategies to cope with the rapidly accelerating pace of existential threats.

On the one hand there is resort to achieving a kind of nihilistic moral purity, epitomised by attitudes to the Syrian dissaster. The heart of this lies in the sense of the likelyhood of defeat- not of an abandonment of the class as the agent of change, but a very real recognition that they are not consciously leading the struggle and thus logically struggles will be defeated. Battles are defensive. Cross class alliances and appeals to institutions are more paletable with this rational because the immediate battle to preserve conditions, to save specific identifiable lives, is not only sacrosanct but is all that is imaginable.

On the other hand there is an attempt to inoculate the left against bleeding in of reactionary ideas from outside. It's a focus that looks to defend political gains in limited sectors of the working class and is more focused on a long game of achieving something out of the present crisis of the system, hoping for a spontaneous re-emergence of class struggle from within that crisis precisely because the left doesn't have the kind of penetration or numbers to foster it. This kind of thinking tends to over emphasise any signs of life from the class and, caught in an unpopular holding pattern, is constantly trying to justify itself.

To be frank, both these perspectives are producing a distorted picture of the underlying reality.

I don't have some magic third alternative perspective to offer that suggests ways to overcome the weakness of both these probably quite poorly charactrised mentalitys, as I said what is at their root is is a historic decline in class consciousness and intelligence of its present condition. I know much better equipped minds than mine from all sides of The debate are working tirelessly on the nature of the period. Thinking this through though I do have a couple of concrete suggestions:

The old left has to accept the changed circumstances. They can't control things, their significance is declining. Let go, evolve and win the arguments if you can. Don't form your own alternative coalitions that's loving dumb.

People working in the new left need to learn to tell the diffrence between excited, emergent new people with liberal ideas and toxic liberal reactionaries, and that goes for both sides of the debate. The ultrareds need to stop hissing at 'liberals' and get their head around who their audience is and the kind of gap we need to close with them.

The moralists need to stop it. Seriously just give it a rest, unless you are a Syrian or a migrant personally actually yourself, in which case fair play we all need to hear you and you have a right to just be so loving mad with everyone.

And this is no solution to anything, but everyone needs to shutup with the sense of embattlment and abusiveness of the other side. You must grasp how loving hypocritical that is. If you don't, take take a break from fb.

I agree that unfortunately we haven't actually had a way of cutting across the divide, although I guess the theatre in the USA is providing some ground on that front (although as pointed out, already split due to the actions of some), but ultimately we're struggling to reach a resolution to anything as is.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 15:29

Lord of the Llamas: Jul 9, 2002; EULER'VE TO SEE IT VENN SOMEONE CALLS IT THE WRONG THING AND PROVOKES MY WRATH

LemonDrizzle posted:

Well, they aren't legal tender so the wide-eyed starers aren't completely wrong...

Legal tender has nothing to do with on the spot payments anyway, only repayments of debt which means that stuff like restaurant bills (because you've already eaten before you pay) are the only time it would generally apply. Almost all the time it would be company policy to accept the money anyway so the staff usually don't have the right to refuse you. I got an apology from First Bus group after one of their drivers refused to let me on when I only had Scottish money on me for this very reason :eng101:

# ? Feb 16, 2017 15:39

Tesseraction: Apr 5, 2009

namesake posted:

Here's a really nice summary of the attitudes the left has been taking over Brexit and we've been doing in the thread:

I agree that unfortunately we haven't actually had a way of cutting across the divide, although I guess the theatre in the USA is providing some ground on that front (although as pointed out, already split due to the actions of some), but ultimately we're struggling to reach a resolution to anything as is.

Nifty. Where's this from?

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:14

namesake: Jun 19, 2006; "When I was a girl, around 12 or 13, I had a fantasy that I'd grow up to marry Captain Scarlet, but he'd be busy fighting the Mysterons so I'd cuckold him with the sexiest people I could think of - Nigel Mansell, Pat Sharp and Mr. Blobby."

Tesseraction posted:

Nifty. Where's this from?

Just someone I know on Facebook, not a famous lefty or anything.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:17

Tesseraction: Apr 5, 2009

namesake posted:

Just someone I know on Facebook, not a famous lefty or anything.

Well, it's a good piece. Out of interest is the author an Entrenched Lex or a Moral Remainer?

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:28

Oh dear me: Aug 14, 2012; I have burned numerous saucepans, sometimes right through the metal

Fangz posted:

I think "People who think about ethics and morality" have pretty much abandoned the concept that there's a single universally held moral system that is demonstrably the best. Not everyone is a strict utilitarian - in fact very few people are.

No one ever thought there was a "universally held" moral system. Consequentialism is still a major school in ethics, though, and it does rule out saving your family first just because they are your family.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:30

JFairfax: Oct 23, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

Kaiser Soze didn't put his family first

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:33

Miftan: Mar 31, 2012; Terry knows what he can do with his bloody chocolate orange...

Oh dear me posted:

No one ever thought there was a "universally held" moral system. Consequentialism is still a major school in ethics, though, and it does rule out saving your family first just because they are your family.

One of the big three, and even in the other 2 you'd have to do some arguing to get to the fact that 'family comes first' is a proper way to behave morally.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:35

namesake: Jun 19, 2006; "When I was a girl, around 12 or 13, I had a fantasy that I'd grow up to marry Captain Scarlet, but he'd be busy fighting the Mysterons so I'd cuckold him with the sexiest people I could think of - Nigel Mansell, Pat Sharp and Mr. Blobby."

Tesseraction posted:

Well, it's a good piece. Out of interest is the author an Entrenched Lex or a Moral Remainer?

....

Trying not to be any of them?

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:37

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Oh dear me posted:

No one ever thought there was a "universally held" moral system. Consequentialism is still a major school in ethics, though, and it does rule out saving your family first just because they are your family.

How?

Just to be clear, we are positing the situation where you can choose to save individual A or B and A is your family, B is not, and all else is equal.

Surely advocating for 'flipping a coin' in such situations is far more of a Deontological position than a consequential one. From a consequential one it genuinely doesn't matter which you save aside from any extra value added to individual A from them being their family. Assuming being your family doesn't add negative value, you should definitely always save A. (If it does add negative value, then you should save B always. There's no position, it seems to me, where you want to be willfully blind.)

Fangz fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:38

goddamnedtwisto: Dec 31, 2004; If you ask me about the mole people in the London Underground, I WILL be forced to kill you; Fun Shoe

big scary monsters posted:

This reminded me of the actual, real-life, mordern-day Jacobite I met one time while I was out for a walk in Irvine. He was extremely angry about Douglases, let me tell you.

Do they still send those mad letters to the guy in Bavaria that's James' last descendant offering to start the war any time he wants?

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:50

Tesseraction: Apr 5, 2009

namesake posted:

....

Trying not to be any of them?

I was just wondering if they were being self-critical is all. They seemed pretty down on Moral Remainers.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:53

Oh dear me: Aug 14, 2012; I have burned numerous saucepans, sometimes right through the metal

Fangz posted:

Surely advocating for 'flipping a coin' in such situations is far more of a Deontological position than a consequential one. From a consequential one it genuinely doesn't matter which you save

Consequentialists don't advocate tossing a coin, but looking at the results of what you do. I am really not sure how you get to the second statement. From a consequentialist view I should save that life which will have the best effects, and considerations might be: how long they might be expected to live, how many people would be bereaved if they died, do they have dependants in particular need of them, are they medical geniuses likely to save others and so on.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:56

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Do they still send those mad letters to the guy in Bavaria that's James' last descendant offering to start the war any time he wants?

His daughter did have her son, third in line to the Jacobite succession, in Portland Hospital. The first Jacobite heir born in the British Isles since 1688, and also the first Jacobite to become in line for head of state of another territory due to her dynastic marriage to the Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein.

~It's happening.~

# ? Feb 16, 2017 16:57

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Oh dear me posted:

Consequentialists don't advocate tossing a coin, but looking at the results of what you do. I am really not sure how you get to the second statement. From a consequentialist view I should save that life which will have the best effects, and considerations might be: how long they might be expected to live, how many people would be bereaved if they died, do they have dependants in particular need of them, are they medical geniuses likely to save others and so on.

Right, so in the case of all else being equal? (EDIT: As in e.g. a situation where you know literally nothing else except that one of the two is your family member, so none of those other considerations can be made?)

The friend/family member is a known quantity who will make the person deciding (and his own friends) unhappy, the stranger is a stranger (and so potentially has *no family or friends*, something ruled out for person A), so the family member gets saved.

I'm not advocating for a position where bonds of family or friendship overwhelm all other considerations.

Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:00

Oh dear me: Aug 14, 2012; I have burned numerous saucepans, sometimes right through the metal

Fangz posted:

The friend/family member is a known quantity who will make the person deciding (and his own friends) unhappy, the stranger is a stranger (and so potentially has *no family or friends*, something ruled out for person A), so the family member gets saved.

No, that's wrong: the stranger also potentially has hundreds of family and friends and is a young medical genius to boot. Just mentioning a possibility isn't good enough, you have to go by probability.

I am in my fifties, childless, chronically ill, and most of my family are dead already. Someone who knew me would also know that they would probably do more good by saving the other person. (Assuming the other person was not 90 years old or wearing a UKIP badge.)

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:10

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Oh dear me posted:

No, that's wrong: the stranger also potentially has hundreds of family and friends and is a young medical genius to boot. Just mentioning a possibility isn't good enough, you have to go by probability.

I am in my fifties, childless, chronically ill, and most of my family are dead already. Someone who knew me would also know that they would probably do more good by saving the other person. (Assuming the other person was not 90 years old or wearing a UKIP badge.)

Then you've constructed a situation where it's not 'all else being equal'.

Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:12

Pochoclo: Feb 4, 2008; No...; Clapping Larry

So, if countries are shared beliefs, why do so many people who share the beliefs of the UK want to expel so many other people who also fully share the beliefs of the UK from the territory of the UK, based solely on an administrative property of these people? Not even birthplace, just citizenship seems to be enough to cause this response. Why? They are their countrymen, aren't they?

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:13

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Pochoclo posted:

So, if countries are shared beliefs, why do so many people who share the beliefs of the UK want to expel so many other people who also fully share the beliefs of the UK from the territory of the UK, based solely on an administrative property of these people? Not even birthplace, just citizenship seems to be enough to cause this response. Why? They are their countrymen, aren't they?

Because they are douchebags.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:16

forkboy84: Jun 13, 2012; Corgis love bread. And Puro

Cerv posted:

frankly i'm disgusted that you'd have that bust in the first place.
few things are more immoral that opposition to UK's nuclear disarmament.

I've never been prouder to be regarded as having an immoral stance on something tbh.

And yeah, I've never really felt myself as British except once every 4 years as a kid when the Olympics would come around. I've always self-identified as Scottish. Which, rather than being a political statement is probably based in sport again, specifically international football. I've little doubt that if there was a United Kingdom international football team instead of the 4 home nations, and a unified UK football league instead of different national leagues 25 years ago then I'd have grown up with a much less strong Scottish identity. Though it's already deeply embedded now so if you changed all that I'd just stop watching international football (it's shite anyway).

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:21

Oh dear me: Aug 14, 2012; I have burned numerous saucepans, sometimes right through the metal

Fangz posted:

Then you've constructed a situation where it's not 'all else being equal'.

I took the situation described. Since the rescuer is supposed to know one of the victims, they should know roughly whether there's reason to suppose they are likely to live longer and do more good than the other victim (in the unlikely event that the other victim's appearance and age give no clues about this at all). It's very unlikely that they are exactly average. But if there were really no reason to think one life would either be longer or do more good than the other, the decision would of course be morally neutral from a consequentialist point of view.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:23

Pochoclo: Feb 4, 2008; No...; Clapping Larry

Fangz posted:

Because they are douchebags.

Sure, but what I mean is that for many many people currently in the UK, the "I just prefer that the country's resources are spent with preference towards my own countrymen" argument they're using is actually, deep down, "I just prefer that the country's resources are spent with preference towards my own countrymen... as long as they belong to my favourite arbitrarily defined (mostly ethnic) group"

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:24

forkboy84: Jun 13, 2012; Corgis love bread. And Puro

Pochoclo posted:

Sure, but what I mean is that for many many people currently in the UK, the "I just prefer that the country's resources are spent with preference towards my own countrymen" argument they're using is actually, deep down, "I just prefer that the country's resources are spent with preference towards my own countrymen... as long as they belong to my favourite ethnic group"

Well yes. Casual xenophobia is a core part of the shared nationality identity.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:24

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Oh dear me posted:

I took the situation described. Since the rescuer is supposed to know one of the victims, they should know roughly whether there's reason to suppose they are likely to live longer and do more good than the other victim (in the unlikely event that the other victim's appearance and age give no clues about this at all). It's very unlikely that they are exactly average. But if there were really no reason to think one life would either be longer or do more good than the other, the decision would of course be morally neutral from a consequentialist point of view.

I think you're morphing the situation away from what the original debate was about. The debate was originally about friends or loved ones, and the idea that your friendship or love of one of the individual creates a "conflict of interest" and so either an 'impartial' judge should be brought in or the decision should be done randomly. I think there's a lot of assumptions being put in here, but from the consequentialist's viewpoint it's fundamentally about the admissibility of evidence, whether a person's personal knowledge and familiarity is admissable or not. Again, I'm not arguing that such feelings trump all others. I am however arguing that there's no obvious consequentialist argument that your personal feelings should be totally ignored as a rule.

It is obviously difficult to construct plausible 'all else is equal' dilemmas.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:27

Oh dear me: Aug 14, 2012; I have burned numerous saucepans, sometimes right through the metal

Pochoclo posted:

Sure, but what I mean is that for many many people currently in the UK, the "I just prefer that the country's resources are spent with preference towards my own countrymen" argument they're using is actually, deep down, "I just prefer that the country's resources are spent with preference towards my own countrymen... as long as they belong to my favourite arbitrarily defined (mostly ethnic) group"

Surely it is really "I just prefer that the country's resources are spent with preference on me and my family. Restricting the range to my ethnic group slightly increases my share or chance, and then we could sanction a whole load more as scroungers, stick a load in prison as criminals, etc"

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:28

Guavanaut: Nov 27, 2009; Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998; Toilet Rascal

Oh dear me posted:

But if there were really no reason to think one life would either be longer or do more good than the other, the decision would of course be morally neutral from a consequentialist point of view.

Well there's always the broader social argument, that your decision is just one of many, but has an impact on how others may act.

In one case, sufficient people choosing to spare the family member may create a society with closer family bonds, more close knit communities, more stable relationships, but also more nepotism, less tolerance of outsiders, less diversity of thought.
In the other it might be the inverse, greater likelihood to help someone we haven't met, greater diversity, but less closeness, warmth, or community.

Which of those you think is better depends in turn to who was at the lever when it was your turn on the tracks.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:31

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# ? May 10, 2024 20:32

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Pochoclo posted:

Sure, but what I mean is that for many many people currently in the UK, the "I just prefer that the country's resources are spent with preference towards my own countrymen" argument they're using is actually, deep down, "I just prefer that the country's resources are spent with preference towards my own countrymen... as long as they belong to my favourite arbitrarily defined (mostly ethnic) group"

People have varying and complicated views of what their nation means to them at the end of the day. Welcome to the fun world of belief systems.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:35

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