Unless you mean things like parents choosing to screen for Down syndrome, which is not what most people call "eugenics" since it's completely voluntary.
I joke, but that actually is the problem. I mean, look at you! Even trying to disclaim eugenics you can't manage not to espouse it, just in the "positive" or "voluntary" or "new eugenics" or "liberal eugenics" variety that bothers people less than all the others.
I mean, I get why a programmable system of ethics appeals to programmers, just as a mathematical one to mathematicians, and for like cause in both cases. But you are required to acknowledge reality has the permanent right of veto, not merely pay lip service to the concept of it possibly for the moment holding that privilege.
Because that's a common practice in most developed countries. And it hasn't led to Nazi Germany in those countries.
You know as well as I do suffering under utilitarianism has exactly the value the advocate of the moment cares to give it at the moment, whether that be negative, neutral, or vastly to the greater good. Why even attempt such a trivially obvious lie?
Do you believe that parents who choose to terminate a downs fetus are evil/utilitarian?
Or are the doctors who perform the testing/abortion the evil/utilitarian ones?
Or the lawmakers who allow such testing/abortion to be legal?
Where exactly is the responsibility for being evil/utilitarian in your mind?
I'm not criticizing parents' decisions, but yours. This specifically includes your using the sorrow of others, in this case parents faced with a harrowing dilemma, as an excuse for your own behavior, rather than demonstrate anything resembling the courage of your supposed convictions.
I don't know man, if you think it's fine for parents to abort downs babies, I think that means you're the utilitarian.
You can try deny it, but in your heart of hearts you think it's fine to value avoiding the inconvenience of a downs baby higher than the value of a fetus's life.
That's pretty damn utilitarian.
> You can try deny it, but in your heart of hearts you think it's fine to value avoiding the inconvenience of a downs baby higher than the value of a fetus's life.
> That's pretty damn utilitarian.
Thank you for conceding that utilitarianism trivially entails arrogating unto oneself the right to decide universally who lives and who dies, in quite literally every imaginable case - this being obviously true to so reflexive and unreflected-upon an extent that you can only conceive of even an overtly hostile and disdainful interlocutor arguing he should instead be given that power, rather than that no one should.
Is there anything you'd care to add to that, or are you content with having revealed your vicious ideology in all its bare-fanged, blood-soaked glory?
So you believe that red states which disallow aborting downs babies are more moral than blue states that allow aborting downs babies?
Since the red states are the only ones that try to ensure that "no one has that power" (to abort downs babies)
Do you actually believe in anything except misunderstanding what utilitarian means?
Were you not expecting to have to convince anyone? If that really is so, then again I have to ask, do you imagine this sort of thing normal? Are you in the habit of letting harangue stand in for conversation in ordinary life also, or is this a special occasion?
Neither side persuades the other, and the thread becomes more about rhetorical sparring than the original topic.
Now we have an illustration of precisely what that means, more or less entirely in spite of those irritated into furnishing it.
Oh, I understand why rhetoric gets a bad name. No fool ever likes being made to look foolish. That's worth doing, in public, as often as possible, with the kind of person it takes to look utilitarianism full in the face, 'repugnant conclusion' and all, and still embrace it.
Easy, your utility function is an indicator on WWPTD (What Would a Priest of Tezcatlipoca Do)?
+1000 when your actions are in accordance with a priest of Tezcatlipoca, and -1000 when they are not.
Like string theory, you can make utilitarianism fit anything. So on its own, it is neither good nor evil.
It entirely depends on which utility function.
I appreciate your honesty.