In medicine, you face this question all the time. Will a surgery do more harm than good. Can I just leave that person suffering, or should I roll the dice with this surgery? It’s a proper dilemma to ponder. How about this medication that improves the patient’s quality of life in one area, but causes some side effects that are less horrifying than the underlying condition. Sounds like a win, but is it really?
In various technical contexts, you often find yourself comparing two bad options and pick the one that is “less bad”. Neither of them are evil, good, great or even acceptable. They’re both bad, and you have to pick one so that the machine can work for a while longer until you get the real spare parts and fix it properly. For example, you may end up running a water pump at lower speed for the time being. It wears down the bearing, moves less water, consumes too much energy etc, but it’s still better than shutting the pump down for two weeks.
You probably do this all the time without thinking much about it. For example, updating mains-powered devices without UPS. There's a chance the power goes out and something gets screwed up.
Yeah. Roll the dice, hope for the best and all that. If power goes out, you could be looking at several days of troubleshooting, but it is unlikely to happen.
On the other hand, you could get that UPS, but that’s going to take time, and the server really needs those security patches today. Are you going to roll that dice instead and hope nobody tries to exploit a new vulnerability discovered this morning?
Yeah, but depending on where you live that would be a freak accident and not something worth considering. In my entire life I have never experienced a mains power outage, it's not really a thing in Germany
If there really are only harmful options, for sure choose the least harm. But you have to make sure that you're not ignoring an option which involves no harm.
I mean for most things there are almost unlimited choices. One can go mad in response to something. So just want to add to not assume there are only two effective choices and be creative to look for another possible effective choice. I mean if you find a new choice to avoid a choice that you can see will have the same result of the first choice then making the new choice is effectively the same as the other choice.
I'd caveat that if you didnt know the new choice would result in the same thing as the first choice, you still gained new knowledge by trying it out. We also can't know all the answers all the time.
I could do it once. When the "lesser evil" decides their whole strategy is being the lesser evil and blackmail me with "if you don't vote us the big evil will come" then I grow tired and issue a big fuck you to the "lesser evil".
Hurray because I choose to stir towards the good thing instead of one of the evils. People supporting big evil or small evil should be questioned, not me.
The concept of the "lesser evil" operates as a manipulative technique, much like the neoliberal slogan "there is no alternative" (TINA). In both cases, the spectrum of alternatives is artificially narrowed to create the illusion of fewer choices than actually exist. For example, while the United States has roughly fifteen multi-state political parties, the lesser evil strategy deliberately implies there are only two.
No, the First-Past-The-Post system + media polarisation makes it a two party system.
If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don't dissappear.
The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.
If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don't dissappear.
The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.
So, would the better option not be to fight for a better system or infiltrate one of the two parties and change it from within?
I think the biggest problem I have with the way the US has been working is that we just vote for the lesser evil and call it a day, thinking we've done our part. We've done all we can do. It makes things simple. It makes us feel good.
The real solution is a long, hard fight for change that will actually solve some of our problems. It involves convincing others, fierce public debate, and may result in violence. You will not be alone, but there will also be countless others who may not agree with your solution and will fight you every step of the way. Your opposition may be inspired by a genuine passion for a different solution. They may have an irrational fear of change. Some may simply benefit from the status quo and prefer to protect what they have than solve any problems for the rest of society. It's so complicated and it's just so much easier to offload that work to politicians.
Unfortunately, the most powerful among us know this and work as hard as possible to convince the politicians that they know better... or they just buy them out.
I think it's usually used to create a false dichotomy so that stockholm syndrome victims can feel good about supporting their abusers.
I use it as an excuse to view the average idiot for what they are. A slow loss is still a loss, but stupid people have convinced themselves that it's a win. I'm glad I'm not like them.
Back in the day, ex-slave Frederick Douglas had to choose between supporting a Presidential candidate who was for immediate abolition of slavery or helping a wishy-washy liberal who wouldn't come out in favor of abolition. Douglas chose to support the liberal because Douglas thought the liberal had a better chance of winning the election. Douglas had to weight the odds and decided that it was better to have a President who might listen to the abolition cause than it was to be 'moral' and lose the election.
Perfect example since slavery wasn't banned until the slave states straight up declared war on the free states. You'll never get a wishy-washy candidate to oppose institutional violence. Only direct action will end injustice
Doing good is important. Sometimes, you want do do a lot of good but feel like you can only do a little good. That's okay! Do what you can.
Sometimes you may think it's okay to be naughty, because you know other kids who are very naughty all the time. But it's still not okay to be naughty, even a little bit.
Too often this option is presented by people who are deliberately manipulating you and causing you to think that you only have the two choices which each benefit them and neither you. Always consider who is offering this choice and why. The true lesser evil here is whatever you have to do to get out of the situation where this choice is being presented to you.
When it comes to politics, it's dangerous thinking that got us in this hellhole in the first place. It proved to anyone getting into politics that you can be a massive shit stain, but just be a slightly smaller shit stain than your opponent and people will support you to no end. Alternatively you can be the exact same level of shit stain as your opponent, but say things in a nicer way or just not at all and get the same results.
I personally have refused to accept this outcome since the only thing it leads us to is a slower death. I'd rather put my time and effort into supporting those that keep us alive even if most refuse to support that decision and call it idiotic.
Depends on the context, but almost always a strawman imo.
Evil is simpler and easier to pull off than good (because you don’t have to value everyone in your equation), so “reasonable” compromises with evil compounded enough times leads to some pretty evil outcomes.
Depends on your meta-ethical framework. If you're a consequentialist, then you should always choose the option that leads to less evil being done. Same if you're a utilitarian.
If you hold to a Kantian value-based framework, like the action itself holds the primary moral goodness or evil in its own nature, then choose the action that itself is less evil.
There are many other frameworks. It also depends on what you think happens in the case of something like voting. Some people see participation in any sense as a sort of tacit agreement or endorsement of the system as a whole. So by casting any vote, even one of protest, you are legitimizing the system as a whole.
Others see voting as a mere means to an end, and thus, is justified if the outcome is better than not voting would be. Some see it as purely neutral, like a tool that can be used for good or bad.
Still, others see it as an inherently good thing, and view abstaining from the act of voting as a moral wrong, because it is a willing act of self-sabotage of the moral interests of the greater good, or sometimes as a violation of the social contract.
There are many other positions and considerations. Basically...it's complicated.
Some people see participation in any sense as a sort of tacit agreement or endorsement of the system as a whole. So by casting any vote, even one of protest, you are legitimizing the system as a whole.
This assumes that there we are always afforded the option to choose whether or not to participate. If you are a bus driver and your full bus is careening toward a cliff, and you have the opportunity to swerve into a procession of nuns crossing the street (toward the cliff? What kind of street is this?), not choosing is still a choice. You can't say, "well, I'll just sit this one out. I can comfort my conscience with the knowledge that I'm not making a choice." The people on your bus are still going to die, and it will be your fault. Now, if you swerved, the nuns would die, and that would be your fault, too.
A person who comes of age in a country with suffrage is a part of that system; they are not afforded the luxury of not casting a vote guilt-free, even if they tend more Kantian, because they were placed in the driver's seat of that bus on the day they became an adult. In fairness, they share that seat with hundreds of millions of others, but they still face a choice between two bad options. No matter which they choose, even if they choose neither, bad things will happen.
I guess what I'm saying is, when the stakes are high enough and stacked up against you enough, you have to become at least a little bit of a consequentialist.
Choosing not to act is still making a choice and may still result in a negative outcome. It's the classic trolley problem. While you may not cause harm through an active choice, your inaction can still lead directly to a negative outcome.
One of the issues the Trolley Problem explores is people's differing willingness to allow harm versus cause it. And that can hold even when the level of harm caused by inaction is significantly higher than what is caused by taking action. E.g. If your personal philosophy dictates that killing someone is always wrong, does it hold if your inaction causes 5 deaths, 10, 50? What if we start tinkering with the people dying? Would you kill a 90 year old man to save a train full of children? The Trolley Problem is really just a starting point to examine that dichotomy between causing harm and allowing harm and just how permeable the line between them can be when you start changing the conditions. Attaching other moral choices to the problem is one way to use the problem to explore a set of beliefs.
Harm was going to happen no matter what you do in the trolley problem. There is no situation where harm does not happen, but there is a situation where you directly are causing harm.
If you give 100 different variations of the problem, I'll answer 100 different ways, because 100 different questions were asked. Almost none of them actually having a real world application, because there are very few situations in life where a 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc option does not exist.
Personally, if I could go the rest of my life without hearing about the trolley problem that'd be great actually.
Harm was going to happen no matter what you do in the trolley problem. There is no situation where harm does not happen, but there is a situation where you directly are causing harm.
Yes, exactly. By taking no action some amount of harm occurs, had you taken action that harm would not have occurred but other harm would have. Ultimately, this is analyzing the extent to which a person is willing to allow harm via inaction versus cause harm through direct action.
Almost none of them actually having a real world application...
Like many thought experiments, the Trolley Problem is an artificial situation intended to isolate certain decision making points so that they can be analyzed. Yes, reality is messy and we often have more than two options. But having this sort of analysis ahead of time can make the real problems less complex to consider. It is also useful for looking at our philosophical frameworks and where they break down.
Personally, if I could go the rest of my life without hearing about the trolley problem that’d be great actually.
The Trolley Problem is a tool for examining our beliefs. Throwing it away because it is imperfect and uncomfortable only leads to a blindness of self.
I am to hunger and I am to eat, I am to end something's being in order for me to be.
Best I can do is reduce the damage I induce. Eat just enough and waste little. Regardless I did an evil and now that something is no more.
I must have reverence for the harm I induce. To apply this into politics, harm will always happen - best you can do is fixate on the interests that are dire and do your part to reduce the harm in other avenues. The world is so interconnected, that almost every action has a negative - we are often just oblivious for we can only see our part.
I mean, if you truly have no other choice, what else can you do? Can it even be considered evil at that point or just "still painful"? If I have to chop off my/someone's gangrenous leg to ensure survival, is that evil or just, you know, not ideal? It's important not to get too lost in semantics...
I was in a discussion a couple months ago with someone on here who told me "you have to vote for the lesser of two nazis." That wasn't hyperbole. We were literally discussing how you could vote in election where the two options were Nazis. Something about Elon musk's new party I think I forget. But the guy thought that if there's two Nazis running the responsible thing to do is to vote for the one you think is less bad. Which I don't know how you make that decision but okay. By the way that discussions seemed a little more absurd a few months ago now it seems downright prescient.
That discussion kind of perfectly encapsulates my feelings on the subject of voting for the lesser of two evils. Now I get the Strategic reasoning of voting for the lesser of two evils. I get the logic. But my feeling is it always does eventually end in what we were talking about. Voting for the lesser of two evils eventually is going to get you the point where you're voting for a literal Nazi. That's where the road leads.
Obviously true? In real life I’ve found it’s often worth doing a bit of thinking / effort to find a third option though. Not always possible though - like when voting - though I don’t think picking the least worst (imho) option when it comes to political representation is immoral
Its a large component of my morality. Being basically a subcomponent of ethic of least harm. I mean armchair idealized morality is great but this life don't always give you a good option.
Depends how evil the lesser evil is. There is a point where even the less bad choice is so bad I refuse to choose at all, even if it means a worse outcome overall.
In politics for example I might vote for a party close to the centre, despite being far left myself, if it is the only tactically sound choice to prevent a fascist from being elected, but I wouldn't vote for a fascist to prevent an even worse fascist.
But why? If you had the choice of getting stabbed with a pin or stabbed with a knife why would you ever abstain or not choose the pin? It just doesn't make sense.
Your example doesn't fit since it doesn't involve doing something myself (as opposed to something happening to me) and there is no morality involved the choices.
The reason I wouldn't do something evil to try to prevent something even more evil, is because I don't believe in doing evil things, even with good intentions. Sometimes I think it's better to just let the trolley do its thing, rather than getting involved, if there are no good choices.
Lets take your scenario of not voting for fascist-lite as a means to fight against Full-Fat fascist.
In the current American system ( the greatest and most functional system /s), not voting effectively gives the vote to the eventual victor (that's reductive but you know what I mean)
Assuming the BigFash win, the choice of inaction would be more impactful than the action of voting for DietFash.
On a relative scale and depending on how you feel about fascism I suppose.
So yes the participation and outcome matter but the effect isn't always equal.
Inactively participating in the rise of the GrandMasterFash would be the cost of feeling good about not actively voting for the LesserFash.
Ultimately it's shit choices all around, but that's the point of the lesser of two evils, right?
I mean I understand the cause and effect, but that's not what the question was about. It was about morality. And I've explained how I feel about that.
What if fascist A plans to kill innocent group X and fascist B plans to kill innocent group Y, but group X is more people? Should I vote for fascist B then? How would you explain that to group Y, that is now being killed because of your choice, but would have been fine otherwise? Do you think they will be okay with your numbers argument?
That's an extreme example, but I never said I would allow a fascist to win, because I disliked the other candidate's policy on public transit, just that there is a line somewhere that I won't cross, even if it means a somehow "less bad" outcome.
Inaction that causes a harm is an action. Say for example you’re a muslim that doesn’t vote for a female candidate because you feel she doesn’t do enough to help your people. If the other candidate actively allows great harm to your people, you failing to vote for the female candidate is helping empower the harm on your people.
I just hope we never see this example in real life.
That a disingenuous reply at best, the choice is clearly "person doesn’t do enough to help your people" vs "person who actively allows great harm to your people".
The example could probably have done with being gender neutral, but even so.
I'm not sure why you zeroed in on the female part and not the "doesn’t do enough to help your people" part.
You can aim to do something good, with a risk of something bad happening (e.g. as another poster said, rolling the dice on surgery to alleviate suffering at the risk of the patient dying)
...or you can do evil.
The "lesser of two evils" is just used as justification for something that can't be morally justified otherwise.
It's a manipulative fallacy. Humanity has the total ability to control its destiny within what's physically possible. People presenting two options and demanding a choice of one discount every possibly out of an infinite set of possibilities except those two.
I think it's like the trolley problem: a trolley (like a train) is barreling down the tracks to a fork in the tracks. You have a lever that will divert the train. Tied to the tracks dead ahead are five innocent people who will all certainly die if you don't throw the lever. However, one innocent person is tied to the tracks that you would divert the trolley to. Assume the trolley has no passengers and all five (or the one) will certainly be killed by the trolley.
The dilemma here is that by doing nothing, you could say you have nothing to do with the five people dying. You didn't put them there. You can blame the person who did put them there, but by doing nothing, you can say you have no blood on your hands. Or you can pull the lever, but then the blood of the one person is absolutely on your hands, but you can say you saved the other five.
Diverting the trolley is the lesser of two evils. But is it the right call? Depends on the situation.
And of course, there's also the unsaid option of diverting it and liberating the one in time, then the rest.
But, that is more difficult to pull off. Though better. I think if both the greater and the lesser evil support a greatly harmful outcome, then the only winning option is to support neither and fight for an option that's better.
With FPTP in the USA, the winning option would have been that everyone who normally voted Dem, voted for Green or the Democratic Socialist Party. But again, harder to pull off since you gotta convince so many people.
It's always odd to me when words develop parallel but distinct meanings based on context. Like, I know "to cleave to" something is to attach to it, but it trips me up (esp. in a Warhammer context where Saltzpyre would be hanging out) since I default to "he was cleaved in twain".
As with most other English oddities, I assume this is holdover from my ancestors treating other languages like swap meets.
Seem fairly sound and self evident. Obviously there can be disagreements on judgement, but I can't think of an scenario where the greater evil should not be opposed.
IMO, developing conciousness of the society is far more important than choosing the lesser evil.
Also the bigger evil, is only evil in your view. And letting the course run, is one of the best ways for that big evil to show people why it is bigger evil.
There is no such thing as good or evil. There's only the things that make us feel good and things that do not. For some people, the things that make them feel good are also things that make others feel good; but there's a lot of people who only feel good by causing others to feel bad.
The only thing that matters is balancing what makes you feel better with the things that make the people you rely on feel better.
It’s highly context dependent.
In medicine, you face this question all the time. Will a surgery do more harm than good. Can I just leave that person suffering, or should I roll the dice with this surgery? It’s a proper dilemma to ponder. How about this medication that improves the patient’s quality of life in one area, but causes some side effects that are less horrifying than the underlying condition. Sounds like a win, but is it really?
In various technical contexts, you often find yourself comparing two bad options and pick the one that is “less bad”. Neither of them are evil, good, great or even acceptable. They’re both bad, and you have to pick one so that the machine can work for a while longer until you get the real spare parts and fix it properly. For example, you may end up running a water pump at lower speed for the time being. It wears down the bearing, moves less water, consumes too much energy etc, but it’s still better than shutting the pump down for two weeks.
You probably do this all the time without thinking much about it. For example, updating mains-powered devices without UPS. There's a chance the power goes out and something gets screwed up.
Yeah. Roll the dice, hope for the best and all that. If power goes out, you could be looking at several days of troubleshooting, but it is unlikely to happen.
On the other hand, you could get that UPS, but that’s going to take time, and the server really needs those security patches today. Are you going to roll that dice instead and hope nobody tries to exploit a new vulnerability discovered this morning?
Either way, it’s pretty bad.
"lesser risk" is a lot different than "lesser evil"
so is "higher cost"
yeah I was unimpressed with those examples. usually its something where you have no real choice.
Yeah, but depending on where you live that would be a freak accident and not something worth considering. In my entire life I have never experienced a mains power outage, it's not really a thing in Germany
Yeah, where I live it happens like once every two-three years, usually during winter storms so it's easy to avoid doing it then.
In medicine you chose the best option not the lesser evil
The way I see it, that’s just different wording for the same thing. More patient friendly, for sure.
If there really are only harmful options, for sure choose the least harm. But you have to make sure that you're not ignoring an option which involves no harm.
The problem really is when people assume there's only two choices. If you dont like the choices, be creative and come up with something else.
If you are in this position, it helps to remember a great suits quote:
You need a bigger gun
—Harvey Specter
I mean for most things there are almost unlimited choices. One can go mad in response to something. So just want to add to not assume there are only two effective choices and be creative to look for another possible effective choice. I mean if you find a new choice to avoid a choice that you can see will have the same result of the first choice then making the new choice is effectively the same as the other choice.
I'd caveat that if you didnt know the new choice would result in the same thing as the first choice, you still gained new knowledge by trying it out. We also can't know all the answers all the time.
totally agree.
I could do it once. When the "lesser evil" decides their whole strategy is being the lesser evil and blackmail me with "if you don't vote us the big evil will come" then I grow tired and issue a big fuck you to the "lesser evil".
So, the worst thing happens but hurray for you because you didn't let yourself feel bad about it?
Hurray because I choose to stir towards the good thing instead of one of the evils. People supporting big evil or small evil should be questioned, not me.
So, you're going to skip over the whole 'worst thing happening' part?
No, but it's not my fault.
Why it have to be responsibility of the people who doesn't want the "lesser evil"?
Why is not responsibility of the people not wanting "the actual good thing"?
"No, but it's not my fault."
Sounds like what millions of Germans said after WW2.
Disengage
The concept of the "lesser evil" operates as a manipulative technique, much like the neoliberal slogan "there is no alternative" (TINA). In both cases, the spectrum of alternatives is artificially narrowed to create the illusion of fewer choices than actually exist. For example, while the United States has roughly fifteen multi-state political parties, the lesser evil strategy deliberately implies there are only two.
No, the First-Past-The-Post system + media polarisation makes it a two party system. If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don't dissappear. The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.
So, would the better option not be to fight for a better system or infiltrate one of the two parties and change it from within?
I think the biggest problem I have with the way the US has been working is that we just vote for the lesser evil and call it a day, thinking we've done our part. We've done all we can do. It makes things simple. It makes us feel good.
The real solution is a long, hard fight for change that will actually solve some of our problems. It involves convincing others, fierce public debate, and may result in violence. You will not be alone, but there will also be countless others who may not agree with your solution and will fight you every step of the way. Your opposition may be inspired by a genuine passion for a different solution. They may have an irrational fear of change. Some may simply benefit from the status quo and prefer to protect what they have than solve any problems for the rest of society. It's so complicated and it's just so much easier to offload that work to politicians.
Unfortunately, the most powerful among us know this and work as hard as possible to convince the politicians that they know better... or they just buy them out.
You are intentionally shutting out reality and choosing to believe that third party candidates are viable but they absolutely are not
You are intentionally shutting out the meaning of my comment.
Which is? If it's not trying to convince people to piss into the void by voting third party, I'm all ears
I think it's usually used to create a false dichotomy so that stockholm syndrome victims can feel good about supporting their abusers.
I use it as an excuse to view the average idiot for what they are. A slow loss is still a loss, but stupid people have convinced themselves that it's a win. I'm glad I'm not like them.
Back in the day, ex-slave Frederick Douglas had to choose between supporting a Presidential candidate who was for immediate abolition of slavery or helping a wishy-washy liberal who wouldn't come out in favor of abolition. Douglas chose to support the liberal because Douglas thought the liberal had a better chance of winning the election. Douglas had to weight the odds and decided that it was better to have a President who might listen to the abolition cause than it was to be 'moral' and lose the election.
Perfect example since slavery wasn't banned until the slave states straight up declared war on the free states. You'll never get a wishy-washy candidate to oppose institutional violence. Only direct action will end injustice
You really should read up a bit more on the Civil War. Maryland was a slave state that stuck with the Union.
That's not so much "lesser evil" as "achievable good".
Tom-A-to, tom-AH-to.
Moral relativism is consequentialist nonsense, and like most consequentialist nonsense, easy to abuse to justify evil acts. I can't agree to that.
Back in the day, philosophers would stand in the public square and debate any one as an equal.
Today, 'philosophers' hide behind specialized lingo only they understand.
And don't say I could look it up. Einstein said that if a scientist couldn't explain what he was doing to a five year old the scientist was a fraud.
Okay, five-year-old:
Doing good is important. Sometimes, you want do do a lot of good but feel like you can only do a little good. That's okay! Do what you can.
Sometimes you may think it's okay to be naughty, because you know other kids who are very naughty all the time. But it's still not okay to be naughty, even a little bit.
My father is going to beat up my mom if he finds out that she took his drug money to buy food.
Are you saying I shouldn't lie? That it's more important to tell the truth than to protect my mom from a beating?
False dichotomy, those aren't your only choices.
Further, lying isn't automatically wrong. Deceiving or otherwise inhibiting a hostile, evil entity is virtuous.
Thats how it is in our grayscale world
Too often this option is presented by people who are deliberately manipulating you and causing you to think that you only have the two choices which each benefit them and neither you. Always consider who is offering this choice and why. The true lesser evil here is whatever you have to do to get out of the situation where this choice is being presented to you.
When it comes to politics, it's dangerous thinking that got us in this hellhole in the first place. It proved to anyone getting into politics that you can be a massive shit stain, but just be a slightly smaller shit stain than your opponent and people will support you to no end. Alternatively you can be the exact same level of shit stain as your opponent, but say things in a nicer way or just not at all and get the same results.
I personally have refused to accept this outcome since the only thing it leads us to is a slower death. I'd rather put my time and effort into supporting those that keep us alive even if most refuse to support that decision and call it idiotic.
Depends on the context, but almost always a strawman imo.
Evil is simpler and easier to pull off than good (because you don’t have to value everyone in your equation), so “reasonable” compromises with evil compounded enough times leads to some pretty evil outcomes.
Tell me what party should I vote for then :(
It's a great way to lose an election.
False dichotomy.
Also, read Witcher. It have like 9 books about it.
And watch Master & Commander while you're at it.
Depends on your meta-ethical framework. If you're a consequentialist, then you should always choose the option that leads to less evil being done. Same if you're a utilitarian.
If you hold to a Kantian value-based framework, like the action itself holds the primary moral goodness or evil in its own nature, then choose the action that itself is less evil.
There are many other frameworks. It also depends on what you think happens in the case of something like voting. Some people see participation in any sense as a sort of tacit agreement or endorsement of the system as a whole. So by casting any vote, even one of protest, you are legitimizing the system as a whole.
Others see voting as a mere means to an end, and thus, is justified if the outcome is better than not voting would be. Some see it as purely neutral, like a tool that can be used for good or bad.
Still, others see it as an inherently good thing, and view abstaining from the act of voting as a moral wrong, because it is a willing act of self-sabotage of the moral interests of the greater good, or sometimes as a violation of the social contract.
There are many other positions and considerations. Basically...it's complicated.
This assumes that there we are always afforded the option to choose whether or not to participate. If you are a bus driver and your full bus is careening toward a cliff, and you have the opportunity to swerve into a procession of nuns crossing the street (toward the cliff? What kind of street is this?), not choosing is still a choice. You can't say, "well, I'll just sit this one out. I can comfort my conscience with the knowledge that I'm not making a choice." The people on your bus are still going to die, and it will be your fault. Now, if you swerved, the nuns would die, and that would be your fault, too.
A person who comes of age in a country with suffrage is a part of that system; they are not afforded the luxury of not casting a vote guilt-free, even if they tend more Kantian, because they were placed in the driver's seat of that bus on the day they became an adult. In fairness, they share that seat with hundreds of millions of others, but they still face a choice between two bad options. No matter which they choose, even if they choose neither, bad things will happen.
I guess what I'm saying is, when the stakes are high enough and stacked up against you enough, you have to become at least a little bit of a consequentialist.
There is always the option to not pick.
Choosing not to act is still making a choice and may still result in a negative outcome. It's the classic trolley problem. While you may not cause harm through an active choice, your inaction can still lead directly to a negative outcome.
I don't remember the trolley problem being a question with a right and a wrong answer.
One of the issues the Trolley Problem explores is people's differing willingness to allow harm versus cause it. And that can hold even when the level of harm caused by inaction is significantly higher than what is caused by taking action. E.g. If your personal philosophy dictates that killing someone is always wrong, does it hold if your inaction causes 5 deaths, 10, 50? What if we start tinkering with the people dying? Would you kill a 90 year old man to save a train full of children? The Trolley Problem is really just a starting point to examine that dichotomy between causing harm and allowing harm and just how permeable the line between them can be when you start changing the conditions. Attaching other moral choices to the problem is one way to use the problem to explore a set of beliefs.
"Allow harm"
Harm was going to happen no matter what you do in the trolley problem. There is no situation where harm does not happen, but there is a situation where you directly are causing harm.
If you give 100 different variations of the problem, I'll answer 100 different ways, because 100 different questions were asked. Almost none of them actually having a real world application, because there are very few situations in life where a 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc option does not exist.
Personally, if I could go the rest of my life without hearing about the trolley problem that'd be great actually.
Yes, exactly. By taking no action some amount of harm occurs, had you taken action that harm would not have occurred but other harm would have. Ultimately, this is analyzing the extent to which a person is willing to allow harm via inaction versus cause harm through direct action.
Like many thought experiments, the Trolley Problem is an artificial situation intended to isolate certain decision making points so that they can be analyzed. Yes, reality is messy and we often have more than two options. But having this sort of analysis ahead of time can make the real problems less complex to consider. It is also useful for looking at our philosophical frameworks and where they break down.
The Trolley Problem is a tool for examining our beliefs. Throwing it away because it is imperfect and uncomfortable only leads to a blindness of self.
Disengage.
"... or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm." (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics)
You can stand by and do nothing if that's the lesser evil choice
I think of it as the food I must eat.
I am to hunger and I am to eat, I am to end something's being in order for me to be.
Best I can do is reduce the damage I induce. Eat just enough and waste little. Regardless I did an evil and now that something is no more.
I must have reverence for the harm I induce. To apply this into politics, harm will always happen - best you can do is fixate on the interests that are dire and do your part to reduce the harm in other avenues. The world is so interconnected, that almost every action has a negative - we are often just oblivious for we can only see our part.
I mean, if you truly have no other choice, what else can you do? Can it even be considered evil at that point or just "still painful"? If I have to chop off my/someone's gangrenous leg to ensure survival, is that evil or just, you know, not ideal? It's important not to get too lost in semantics...
I was in a discussion a couple months ago with someone on here who told me "you have to vote for the lesser of two nazis." That wasn't hyperbole. We were literally discussing how you could vote in election where the two options were Nazis. Something about Elon musk's new party I think I forget. But the guy thought that if there's two Nazis running the responsible thing to do is to vote for the one you think is less bad. Which I don't know how you make that decision but okay. By the way that discussions seemed a little more absurd a few months ago now it seems downright prescient.
That discussion kind of perfectly encapsulates my feelings on the subject of voting for the lesser of two evils. Now I get the Strategic reasoning of voting for the lesser of two evils. I get the logic. But my feeling is it always does eventually end in what we were talking about. Voting for the lesser of two evils eventually is going to get you the point where you're voting for a literal Nazi. That's where the road leads.
Obviously true? In real life I’ve found it’s often worth doing a bit of thinking / effort to find a third option though. Not always possible though - like when voting - though I don’t think picking the least worst (imho) option when it comes to political representation is immoral
A friend of mine puts it this way: "I don't vote for who's turn it is to lead the KKK either."
The day the KKK has control over your friend's day-to-day existence, that will be a relevant policy.
I mean, couldn't we all just join the KKK and vote in a more moderate grand dragon?
Not choosing is also a choice. It may or may not be the right or wrong choice.
It's particularly sensitive to false dichotomies, and used to justify immoral behavior.
It's far more effective to argue from the veil of ignorance.
Yes, of course. That always assumes a lack of good choice (i.e. no choice also being a bad option).
Choosing the lesser evil is the cornerstone of our great democracies!
Its a large component of my morality. Being basically a subcomponent of ethic of least harm. I mean armchair idealized morality is great but this life don't always give you a good option.
Depends how evil the lesser evil is. There is a point where even the less bad choice is so bad I refuse to choose at all, even if it means a worse outcome overall.
In politics for example I might vote for a party close to the centre, despite being far left myself, if it is the only tactically sound choice to prevent a fascist from being elected, but I wouldn't vote for a fascist to prevent an even worse fascist.
But why? If you had the choice of getting stabbed with a pin or stabbed with a knife why would you ever abstain or not choose the pin? It just doesn't make sense.
Your example doesn't fit since it doesn't involve doing something myself (as opposed to something happening to me) and there is no morality involved the choices.
The reason I wouldn't do something evil to try to prevent something even more evil, is because I don't believe in doing evil things, even with good intentions. Sometimes I think it's better to just let the trolley do its thing, rather than getting involved, if there are no good choices.
Inaction when action is an option is still a choice.
One of the major premises of the trolley problem is the choice.
It's very specifically a scenario where everything is a choice.
The only way to not choose a scenario option is to not participate at all.
Yes. But what I'm trying to say is that whether you are an active participant in the outcome matters too, not just the outcome itself.
I don't disagree in principle.
Lets take your scenario of not voting for fascist-lite as a means to fight against Full-Fat fascist.
In the current American system ( the greatest and most functional system /s), not voting effectively gives the vote to the eventual victor (that's reductive but you know what I mean)
Assuming the BigFash win, the choice of inaction would be more impactful than the action of voting for DietFash.
On a relative scale and depending on how you feel about fascism I suppose.
So yes the participation and outcome matter but the effect isn't always equal.
Inactively participating in the rise of the GrandMasterFash would be the cost of feeling good about not actively voting for the LesserFash.
Ultimately it's shit choices all around, but that's the point of the lesser of two evils, right?
I mean I understand the cause and effect, but that's not what the question was about. It was about morality. And I've explained how I feel about that.
What if fascist A plans to kill innocent group X and fascist B plans to kill innocent group Y, but group X is more people? Should I vote for fascist B then? How would you explain that to group Y, that is now being killed because of your choice, but would have been fine otherwise? Do you think they will be okay with your numbers argument?
That's an extreme example, but I never said I would allow a fascist to win, because I disliked the other candidate's policy on public transit, just that there is a line somewhere that I won't cross, even if it means a somehow "less bad" outcome.
As i said, i don't disagree in principle.
All i was saying in that response was that inaction should also be factored in to any consideration of morality.
Inaction that causes a harm is an action. Say for example you’re a muslim that doesn’t vote for a female candidate because you feel she doesn’t do enough to help your people. If the other candidate actively allows great harm to your people, you failing to vote for the female candidate is helping empower the harm on your people.
I just hope we never see this example in real life.
That's a terrible example. I was talking about having a choice between two evils and not an evil and a woman.
That a disingenuous reply at best, the choice is clearly "person doesn’t do enough to help your people" vs "person who actively allows great harm to your people".
The example could probably have done with being gender neutral, but even so.
I'm not sure why you zeroed in on the female part and not the "doesn’t do enough to help your people" part.
Yes, always.
It's rarely true.
You can aim to do something good, with a risk of something bad happening (e.g. as another poster said, rolling the dice on surgery to alleviate suffering at the risk of the patient dying)
...or you can do evil.
The "lesser of two evils" is just used as justification for something that can't be morally justified otherwise.
It's a manipulative fallacy. Humanity has the total ability to control its destiny within what's physically possible. People presenting two options and demanding a choice of one discount every possibly out of an infinite set of possibilities except those two.
See: horse image
I think it's like the trolley problem: a trolley (like a train) is barreling down the tracks to a fork in the tracks. You have a lever that will divert the train. Tied to the tracks dead ahead are five innocent people who will all certainly die if you don't throw the lever. However, one innocent person is tied to the tracks that you would divert the trolley to. Assume the trolley has no passengers and all five (or the one) will certainly be killed by the trolley.
The dilemma here is that by doing nothing, you could say you have nothing to do with the five people dying. You didn't put them there. You can blame the person who did put them there, but by doing nothing, you can say you have no blood on your hands. Or you can pull the lever, but then the blood of the one person is absolutely on your hands, but you can say you saved the other five.
Diverting the trolley is the lesser of two evils. But is it the right call? Depends on the situation.
And of course, there's also the unsaid option of diverting it and liberating the one in time, then the rest.
But, that is more difficult to pull off. Though better. I think if both the greater and the lesser evil support a greatly harmful outcome, then the only winning option is to support neither and fight for an option that's better.
With FPTP in the USA, the winning option would have been that everyone who normally voted Dem, voted for Green or the Democratic Socialist Party. But again, harder to pull off since you gotta convince so many people.
It's a good concept but I'm more fond of the concept of sound. It comes down to personal preference.
There are always more choices.
--Victor Saltzpyre
(A raw line probably inspired by somebody else lol)
It's always odd to me when words develop parallel but distinct meanings based on context. Like, I know "to cleave to" something is to attach to it, but it trips me up (esp. in a Warhammer context where Saltzpyre would be hanging out) since I default to "he was cleaved in twain".
As with most other English oddities, I assume this is holdover from my ancestors treating other languages like swap meets.
God I love contronyms. Strike is also a fun one because it means to hit and also to miss.
Dust is the best one: to cover in dust (like sugar on a pastry) or to remove dust from (like a bookshelf).
Also a noun.
Totally! It's weird how it can mean the meeting spot between two things, or the separation of them.
It's like someone started using it wrong and it just caught on.
Maybe it was the "could care less" of its day hahaha.
This question is redundant. Evil people choose the evil option, normal people choose the other.
Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos
Seem fairly sound and self evident. Obviously there can be disagreements on judgement, but I can't think of an scenario where the greater evil should not be opposed.
pick the guy who is easier to fight
IMO, developing conciousness of the society is far more important than choosing the lesser evil.
Also the bigger evil, is only evil in your view. And letting the course run, is one of the best ways for that big evil to show people why it is bigger evil.
What's to think about? You going to choose the GREATER evil?
There is no such thing as good or evil. There's only the things that make us feel good and things that do not. For some people, the things that make them feel good are also things that make others feel good; but there's a lot of people who only feel good by causing others to feel bad.
The only thing that matters is balancing what makes you feel better with the things that make the people you rely on feel better.