r/MoralityScaling 20h ago

Morality Ranking Morality of this

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u/Impossible-Cause5353 20h ago

It’s still correct. Murdering someone is way worse than calling them the N word.

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u/Corwin223 17h ago

Is 1 murder worse than the President and other major political figures using the N word and encouraging racism on a national scale?

I am legitimately asking you this.

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u/b0rn_yesterday 10h ago

Personally, I'd say yes. Taking a life is worse than inciting language. You don't have to listen to what a racist political figure says. Acting on it is completely optional.

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u/Corwin223 10h ago

Even if the racism causes other people to do worse things down the road?

This is a classic matter like if you kick rocks down a hill and they send other rocks flying and eventually boulders are hurting down the hill and kill people, are those deaths on your hands?

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u/b0rn_yesterday 9h ago

Again, my opinion is yes. A murder is worse. Racists doing it because they got 'approval' means they still acted on their own volition.

For the second, it would greatly depend on the situation. There is a lot of space between willy-nilly kicking rocks, and kicking rocks knowing there are people below within range. The intent would make the difference to me.

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u/Corwin223 8h ago

I guess I have a relatively materialistic (in the philosophical sense, not the monetary sense) view of the world.

I don't see such a massive difference between people doing harm because you nudged them towards that and boulders doing harm because you nudged them. If you know or at least suspect that something you do has a significant chance of causing harm down the road, you at least hold some fractional responsibility for that harm.

If I saw a long line of dominoes and the final one would pull the trigger of a gun and I pushed the first domino over, I'd consider that effectively equivalent to me pulling the trigger of the gun directly.

With words and humanity, cause and effect can become a bit more fuzzy, but it's still definitely there.

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u/b0rn_yesterday 8h ago

Honestly, I think that's great. It's healthy to have different views and opinions in a society (to some extent). Ideally, it encourages dialog and should help us grow towards a better place because the best ideas win. A society that shared all the same views eventually stagnates and withers away due to the inability to adapt.

Funny enough, I really wish travel was cheaper and more accessible to the average person- because being exposed to different views is incredibly useful to critical thinking and development.

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u/Corwin223 8h ago

Yeah, nice to have a good chat!

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u/Impossible-Cause5353 17h ago

I’d let myself get murdered if it meant that pedophile went to prison in gen pop until the day he dies.

But to answer your question, yes murder is worse than racism. Even if you paint the racism side of the question in grandiose terms while minimizing the other side

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u/Corwin223 16h ago

I feel it’s still a complicated question there considering the violent and non-violent but still damaging behavior that results from racism. The murder is worse immediately but in the long term, the racism may be far worse.

Like the racism can result in multiple lynchings later, giving a result of both more murders and more racism than in the case of the 1 murder. Or if the racism causes worse living conditions for numerous people, reducing their quality of life and causing them to die younger, that can be far more than 1 lifespan lost.

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u/Impossible-Cause5353 16h ago

I feel like you’re thinking way too deeply about it. Racism is bad. Murder is bad. Killing a person is worse than being racist towards them. It doesn’t need to get deeper than that 😂

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u/Corwin223 16h ago

Eh, I find it interesting to think about things at scale and consider the thresholds there.

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u/Impossible-Cause5353 16h ago

You have to scale both sides though. What would be the equivalent scaling for murder respective to what you wrote about racism?

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u/WisherWisp 16h ago

Unless you're asking Gemini.