Originally Posted by elfailo
So would you be upset with someone who got a stroke behind the wheel and crashed into a group of school children 200m down the road as an uncontrollable muscle spasm in his right leg slammed down the gas pedal?
|
First of all, my sympathy is about choice, not uncontrollable muscle spasms.
So in your example, for me it depends if they knew they had a high stroke risk. Because then they made the choice to drive and take the risk to themselves and other people for granted. Similarly, it would matter to me whether or not the person at least tried to do something about it in the 200m drive towards those children if he still had any form of control and situational awareness.
I understand where you're trying to go with the force majeure argument, but the case of Duke isn't about force majeure: if he has a certain amount of capacity of rationality to come up with a god design and get on the internet to write troll posts and do certain other things like analysing bits of PS2 (which he does, drunk or not) then he is capable of choice. If he is then provided with alternative input, it's his choice to use it or not.
Duke here tends to ve very selective with the accepted input. Typically only input he likes or fears, meaning he is capable of data verification and that this is an active choice. Not force majeure.
|
The point is: How can you completely hold someone responsible for urges that they can't possibly control? Brains have ways of their own (most of the processes are actually quite stupid) - consciousness, understanding of it, and resulting actions are always limited in how much they can be controlled, even for someone who holds himself a true rationalist. If Duke turns out to actually have had a tumor that affected his frontal lobe, I would definitely reevaluate my position.
|
I wouldn't. First of all because even if it would impede his qualitative analysis, it clearly doesn't completely block his capacity to analyse. Duke choses NOT to analyse. That is where my empathy falls flat. As long as he doesn't try to be objective at all, not even the tiniest bit of trying, while being capable of accepting other new input just as long as it conforms with existing worldviews, then this is a case of turning a deaf ear.
That's a choice.
|
Now abstract that. Ask yourself how much people can even help it that they turn to God.
|
Pretty much everyone can, as long as they're willing to look at alternative input. Willingness is a choice.
If you're capable of accepting god as an answer, then you're also capable of not accepting a god as an answer. The choice is whether or not you accept input for verification. There is no way input acceptance is mentally wired to the point you have no control over it at all.
Reduced control doesn't mean no control. Reduced control still means you can at the very least try. If you don't try anyway, it doesn't matter to me if you're impaired or not: you choose not to try.
If you're demented however and thus incapable of taking in any input whatsoever, uncapable of even the simplest of tasks,
then it's something different. Duke however, is far removed from that point: he is capable of reading and comprehension, he simply doesn't want to because he wants what he believes to be true. He choses not to be objective and goes out of his way to make his subjective nonsense make sense to himself. He has enough self-awareness to realise he's had a tumor removed, he has enough mental capacity to come up with a reasoning why he survived (this reasoning did not exist prior to his survival, but was created after!). This indicates he does have the capacity to reason, whether it is diminished or not.
And since it's a choice and he is thus in at least a bit of control, his current behaviour is something I'll never have any increased sympathy or respect for.
To answer your question: Hitler was already so high on my hatelist that any amount of due sympathy or understanding wouldn't be enough to bring him down more than 0,0000001%. See why godwinning is silly now?  |
So basically it was the perfect example to provide you with to make you realise my emphatic position is virtually not going to move.
Thus it's not silly, what I find silly (and not increasing sympathy) is someone who automatically dismisses an argument based on the reasoning "oh Hitler argument, thus can be ignored". For that, is a choice: to be biased about such an argument or not.
Choose bias: lose/not increase sympathy. Choose to evaluate (even semi-)objectively: increase in sympathy.
Linear Mode
