Hacker News Reader

Comment by jkn | Hacker News Reader

Ethics is not just about the consequences of an action. Other factors such as motivations are also important.

I think it is sad but ethically acceptable to kill an ant colony in my house, yet I don't think it is OK for children to go in the forest and destroy ant colonies for fun. Or even to dismember one ant for fun, though I may be in a small minority here.

To take a more extreme example, a majority of people seem to find it ethical to have drone strikes in Pakistan despite the civilian casualties. They would certainly not approve of the same drone strikes if they were made for entertainment, even though the physical consequences on the targets would be the same.

View on HN

Can I just point out that the examples you gave are invalid?

I won't advocate the destruction of ant colonies in forests because for ecological reasons, not because of individual ant suffering.

Video footage released from the drone/missile strikes are already being used for entertainment purposes. When I go onto reddit for videos titled "Hellfire missile blows up terrorist". I'm actually enjoying a video of a man being blown up by a Hellfire missile.

I don't think motivations factor into it at all. A death is a death. At the risk of invoking Freduian psycholoanalysis, it's your cognitive dissonance that making you feel one is more justified than the other.

> "I can't be the one killing animals, I'm a good person"

Of course my examples cannot fit the ethics of everybody, there is no absolute ethics. That does not make the examples invalid. They went meant to help the reader understand my point of view, not necessarily share it.

I won't advocate the destruction of ant colonies in forests because for ecological reasons, not because of individual ant suffering.

To me there are ecological and moral reasons why you should not destroy ant colonies. I am aware that not everybody agrees.

Regarding the drone strikes: whether videos of the strikes are also used for entertainment is irrelevant here, as long as it is not part of the motivation behind performing the strikes.

I don't think motivations factor into it at all. A death is a death.

I don't know what you are getting at here. Are you seriously suggesting that shooting people for fun is morally equivalent to shooting them for a good reason?

>Are you seriously suggesting that shooting people for fun is morally equivalent to shooting them for a good reason?

That's an over simplication. I don't quite see the problem with shooting condemned people for fun (provided they experience more or less the same amount of suffering).

But I would point out that your example is loaded since I can't seem to see a senario where extermination of the enemies of the United States would be done for fun. The only reason we kill those people is because they are enemies. If they weren't we won't kill them. Whether we enjoy killing them is a different matter.

The crux of my argument is that it doesn't matter if you enjoyed killing ant colonies/terrorists. You still achieved the same result (dead ants/terrorists).

You believe it is morally reprehensible to have enjoyed killing ants/terrorists. I disagree. Does it matter what the executioner feels when he decapitates his subjects?

All I'm saying is that from a moral point of view, it makes a difference whether you shoot someone for fun (i.e. they get shot because you wanted the fun) or for a better reason (e.g. the person was sentenced to death). This is quite obvious right? I'm just saying your motivations matter from a moral point of view. Whether you enjoy the killing is irrelevant here. Same for the ants: I think it is wrong to destroy an ant colony in order to have fun. I think it is OK to destroy it in order to clean your kitchen. Whether you end up having fun while cleaning your kitchen is irrelevant. What matters is the reason why the action was taken.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com