Groundhog Day and Rape

Except it doesn't matter. If the length of time in the loop is 1 day, or 100 days, or 1 eternity it doesn't matter what happens except in the final loop. Nothing happened. Ever. It never existed in any tangible way.

Things only matter if there are results from it and the only result that would happen is done to yourself and done in a way that isn't illegal.

Now for the moral ramifications... Eh. Noone would know.

Please.

@ Octo: we also have virtue ethics, where (AFAIK) it's some actions are bad because indulging in them makes you a worse person. How I like ethics and meta-ethics threads.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

Yeah, but that's even worse. It's practically simply a completely egocentric version of deontology, so I'd throw it together with deology.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

I wouldn't say that the kind of ethics which assumes rape is bad is worse than the kind that says "go for it, if the victim won't remember", but that's just my opinion.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

I thought about it, and would have to say that even if the day is rewritten, you are still causing someone a considerable amount of emotional damage.

The fact that the action is revised or erased is of no importance to me. The fact that the act was committed and that I did it, would be.

Ah, but why do you think it's bad? If it's due to caring about the victim, then it is consequentialism. Virtue ethics would be the ethics where rape is bad because it taints you, rather than for care for the victim. And classical deontology would deem rape inherently bad - it's bad because it's bad, not because it hurt somebody.

So yeah. IMO, deontology and virteu ethics are so high above in abstract concepts and that makes them both basically egocentric. Consequentialism, judging the outcome or intent of your actions, cares about the victims, and that IMO makes it the best metaphilosophical approach.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

It sounds like you favor consequentialism for reasons that would fit deontology. Caring about the victim is good because it's good. I agree, I find it hard to appeal to something other than the consequences. I still found the phrasing funny.

Sex, Drugs, and Rationality

So I thought for a while, then left, then came back, then thought for a while. So consequentialism, I personally dislike some parts of it, nominally "anything goes if there's no complaint", which is the point of this thread, and the lingering implication that you know what's good for other folks. Granted, the latter exists in some form (same or differing, I don't feel like discerning at the moment) in deontologism. Virtue ethics tend to ask "what to do to be good" rather than "what is good and what is bad", you may find it selfish, but I don't see how being a good person is bad.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

I don't really know anything about virtue ethics so I feel like the implication is being made that there is some sort of obligation to be a "good person", which I disagree with, and I don't know who defines what a good person is.

Murrl LustFatM

I think the question is rather analogous to "if you were in a room with a person who is going to die in fifteen minutes, would it be okay to torture that person provided that no-one would ever know either way?" After all, in fifteen minutes, that person will be dead, and nothing that happened in those fifteen minutes (or during that person's entire lifetime, for that matter) will matter to them.

IMO, the rather obvious answer is that it would be less wrong than torturing someone who might live to suffer from it for decades, or be traumatized to the point of hurting others, but still wrong nevertheless.

Obligation to be moral. I think that may be a different topic.

See my post nr. 25 for that.

While erasing the entire causality of a specific event is quite significant as those in this thread who believe it essentially nullifies any moral relevance have shown (I'm quite pleased there are proponents for both sides of the argument).

You could however, argue that causing suffering at some point, even if it were to be made undone, would still make you immoral at the time (ugh, that's a bad word to use in this context, lol). You are being immoral while commiting the act, and though the act is made undone, you still remember having acted immoral. Well, that's one possibility.

It's really less of a moral question (duh, bad action is bad) than it is a logical one, in how far the meaning of a specific event remains if said event and its causality is erased from history/timeline/universe.

I bet you can simplify it so far as to reduce the thought experiments to simple letters like "A does B", but I'm not really good at that.

May be worthy of discussion, I'm certainly not against it.

edited 5th Dec '11 5:02:37 PM by Excelion

Murrl LustFatM

My answer is no for two reasons: 1) I agree with kashchei (pain for a person for 2 min may not be as bad as pain for the rest of their life, but it's still bad) and 2) I agree with Savage: you can't know THIS loop isn't the last one.

Now I have another hypothetical... Imagine a Groundhog Day loop in which you know the way to get out of it... And that way is to commit an act of which puts you on the bad side of Moral Event Horizon.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

"While erasing the entire causality of a specific event is quite significant as those in this thread who believe it essentially nullifies any moral relevance have shown"

In English, please?

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?

I'd say go for it, it's kind of a "kill an innocent person to save millions" except in this case it's not just a mere millions of lives, it is literally the timeline of the entire universe that is at stake.

Sorry if I couldn't express myself properly, not a native speaker after all.

Basically I'm just trying to put emphasis on the fact that the action in question (like, rape) is truly "erased" completely, which I personally believe is kind of something else than what happens in the various analogies made in this thread (e.g. hurting a person that will die in 15 minutes, hurting someone who has no short-term memory and won't remember it anyway etc.) because in these cases, the action in question still happened. And then I'm asking whether someting that effectively never happened, but which you, and you alone, still remember, is still relevant to questions of morality... Was that understandable?

Murrl LustFatM

Is it the timeline? Or is it just yours?

I don't think there is any practical difference between that and hypothetical memento-mnesia, or, more realistically, death. Based on everything science tells me about the universe, my entire life will essentially be erased upon the point of my death, as far as I am personally concerned. I still care about what happens to me prior to that.

edited 5th Dec '11 5:30:03 PM by MostlyBenign

What do you mean?

Murrl LustFatM

How can you tell whether it's truly the universal timeline being stuck? And not just yourself.

Well, like I said in the OP, I'm going under the assumption that there aren't multiple timelines, but a single one that is looped.

I'm sure it's impossible to tell in that situation, but I don't think that's relevant, it might scare you off doing bad things, though.

edited 5th Dec '11 5:41:40 PM by Excelion

Murrl LustFatM

Even in a single, looping timline, I don't see how you can view it as different from "You do it but no one remembers it later and there are no consequences." At one point, someone was suffering, even if the timeline continues as if they hadn't.

As a consequentialist (per the formal philosophical definition), I must point out that the consequences are not entirely erased upon reset — your mental state isn't reset, which is very significant. Commit rape or brutality? You make it easier for you to do so in the future, which includes when you exit the loop[1]. You would be making yourself a more rapey or more brutal person. You would be creating reasons to believe people don't trust you. Those in themselves are pretty reliably bad outcomes.

[1] If you never exit the loop, the hypothetical question has departed from the realm of inquiries that are pertinent to reality.

'Don't beg for anything, do it yourself, or else you won't get anything.'

I understand this scenario similar to "is raping in your dreams ok?", because in both cases you're operating in realities, which are only real to you. And also what Orange said, consequences to the rapist are still consequences and should be measured.

Excelion, thank you for clarifying. Just so we are on the same page, though, are you fine with causing someone pain for the duration of the rape if the act is immediately erased out of existence afterwards?

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?

I think I know what the OP was trying to get at. Perhaps a better way to ask the same question is...what if Real Life had a "Save/Reload" function, just like a video game?

Come on, I've fuckin' played Fallout and I know that every gamer abuses the living hell out of those functions at least once.

Save the game, do whatever, reload from last save-point. All the crap you did since your last "save" didn't happen if you hit "reload". Would any of you abuse this function? Even a little?

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~