Comment by basedgod | Hacker News Reader

Comment by basedgod | Hacker News Reader

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This is the same logic (albeit different analogy) of closing your eyes, outstretching your arms and swinging them widely. Somebody is still going to get hurt, even if they really should get out of the way.

Strewing together moral absolutes means you stop living in the real world. Violence and war brings more evil to the world, even if it is morally justified. Your failure to acknowledge any of this is appalling.

Somebody whose lost their entire extended family and village by mortar fire because the Ukrainians fought back will be in an objectively much worse position than under a harsh Russian occupation. Weapons, in this case, escalated the conflict and created evil for this person, no amount of moral whitewashing over "freedom" and "vanquishing the aggressor" absolves this.

It may very well be the case that the net utilitarian impact of Ukraine escalating their response to the invasion justifies the resistance, but we live in the real world, and nothing is as cut and dry as you claim, not even a hostile invasion by a despotic power.

> Somebody whose lost their entire extended family and village by mortar fire because the Ukrainians fought back will be in an objectively much worse position than under a harsh Russian occupation.

Please go ahead and make the same argument for the German Nazis. I really want to hear it. I realize in the past that Godwin would be invoked at this point, but we are now in a time where 1:1 comparisons are much more apt, especially when Russians are falsely labeling Ukrainians as "Nazis".

What you're basically saying is that we should just let invaders commit their violence and trust that we will be better off laying down than standing up.

You say that someone whose lost their entire extended family and village would have been better off surrendering to the invaders who killed them. Why? Why does that follow? What is stopping the invaders from killing your friends and family and razing your village after they have conquered your country? At some point you actually have to stand up to protect your family from the people trying to kill them. Because what's to prevent them from setting up death camps at that point? What if their goal is not to occupy your country but to exterminate it?

And what of Ukraine? What happens to the country when Russia takes over? They will destroy that which makes Ukraine unique and rewrite the history for its people and the world. The Republic of Venice remembers what happens when you let the invaders take over. Hundreds of years after the republic surrendered to the invading Napoleon, the Republic of Venice still has not recovered and may never. For a lot of Ukrainians, this could mean the literal end of their country. Where do you live? Do you love your country? Would you appreciate if some people decided they wanted to erase the country you love from world maps? Would you fight to protect it or would you just let it happen?

The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Both arguments to the contrary that you've advanced, (1) that it doesn't create any more evil & (2) that any non-evil side effects are justified because of moral and/or utilitarian superiority, are slippery slopes to moral absolution of any reaction.

An action can be just, and right, and practical, and the best available option... but still be evil.

And the difference between being a despotic megalomaniac is equal parts actions undertaken and honesty about those actions.

The US is shipping weapons to Ukraine to kill Russian soldiers. I support this and believe it to be the best action possible, but I also deeply and resolutely believe it's evil.

> are slippery slopes to moral absolution of any reaction.

Calling these arguments slippery slope doesn't really do much here. We are in fact at an absolute circumstance, so the slope doesn't really have much room to slip. I think the actions of the Russians are quite extreme, and we are allowed to make some moral judgements of these actions given how horrific they are. If we can't, then morality loses a lot of meaning. To say that we can't make a moral judgement is to say that the images we are seeing are not real or are not horrific, and that's a different discussion entirely.

> The US is shipping weapons to Ukraine to kill Russian soldiers. I support this and believe it to be the best action possible, but I also deeply and resolutely believe it's evil.

If you're going to take something that can be together just, right, practical, the best option, and yet still evil, we need to have a deeper discussion of what exactly your perception of evil is, because it seems to encompass quite a lot. If everything is evil then nothing is. Because since you're using such extreme words, you really have to take your argument to the extreme. And like I said, just because it's the extreme doesn't mean that's not where we currently are, so it's appropriate to analyze the extreme. Your argument taken to its conclusion would be that the allies freeing prisoners at Nazi death camps during WWII was a justified act of evil. I don't see any other way to interpret your argument.

> We are in fact at an absolute circumstance, so the slope doesn't really have much room to slip.

E.g. "Nuking Moscow isn't evil because it will end the war in Ukraine."

> deeper discussion of what exactly your perception of evil is

The opposite of good. By my calculus, killing humans is evil.

It may be effective, in that it produces a desired outcome, and it may be just, in that the outcome promotes greater justice or lessens injustice, but those are both orthogonal measurements.

If the Red Army had murdered every guard at the Auschwitz camps in January 1945, that would have been evil. It also would have probably been just.

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