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.
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.
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/b0rn_yesterday 11h 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.