Is that a real question? The answer is very obvious. Those people are a million times less culpable.
(Yes, I know it's sarcastic. But sarcasm still needs to make sense to be effective. You can't say the equivalent of "that logic leads to X very bad thing" if you get the logic wrong.)
The logic is really simple: someone can come up with almost any reason to justify murder if they believe themselves solely capable of such judgment.
If someone recognizes the failings of every human then they are less prone to pass judgment.
Did Ted K not feel justified in his actions? Did he not find his own murderous actions acceptable? Why would he do these things if he didn’t think he was devoid of the sin he saw in his targets?
> The logic is really simple: someone can come up with almost any reason to justify murder if they believe themselves solely capable of such judgment.
I think if you do a survey you'll find lots of people agreeing that major oil executives and PR should be judged harshly. Not murder, but definitely being judged as bad in a way that everyday people pass.
I don't think your argument works at all. Harshly judging some people is not even close to harshly judging almost everyone. The former does not beget the latter.
> If someone recognizes the failings of every human then they are less prone to pass judgment.
Less, sure, but these are pretty egregious cases.
> Did Ted K not feel justified in his actions? Did he not find his own murderous actions acceptable? Why would he do these things if he didn’t think he was devoid of the sin he saw in his targets?
You definitely don't have to think you're free of sin to target sinners.
I'm not trolling you. I think you're making very broad claims about psychology that aren't supported by evidence, and I'm doing my best to understand and engage.
Ted K murdered a PR executive. That was psychopathic. He could easily have deemed a person who drives a car as worthy of death based on the same flimsy reasoning.
It doesn’t matter if we took a poll to see who a large sample of the population thought was a better person, the PR executive or a random person driving a gas guzzler, because cold blooded murder is an absolute evil.
An attempt to understand his actions based on a position of moral superiority over the PR executive is to follow the same psychopathic trajectory as Ted K.
Calmly calculating by oneself who is most worthy of death in a manner that selects a PR executive and then executing on such a plan, as a categorical imperative, is akin to open season on humanity itself.
However, the value judgement that any of us could be seen unfairly in a negative manner and therefore worthy of compassion and understanding, as a categorical imperative, is in comparison universally better and by quite a large margin.
I am engaging in moral absolutes. You and the person I originally responded to are engaging in moral relativism.
> He could easily have deemed a person who drives a car as worthy of death based on the same flimsy reasoning.
> I am engaging in moral absolutes. You and the person I originally responded to are engaging in moral relativism.
I'm not trying to engage in moral relativism.
How do I word this...
When we want to judge how evil his actions are, that's a moral question.
When we want to consider who he would have targeted, that's not a moral question.
When you say he has flimsy reasoning, the flimsy part was deciding to murder people.
He had specific motives for how he picked targets that weren't nearly as flimsy. A moral equivalence to "going open season" doesn't mean that "going open season" is actually how he operated.
Hopefully that makes my main point clear in a satisfactory way?
(And I had an explanation for the survey talk here but it's wordy and awkward so I'm going to cut it unless you want to see it.)
When we want to consider who he would have targeted, that's not a moral question.
What you’re missing here is empathy.
When he considered his targets for murder that is indeed a moral question for him.
He could have considered anyone driving an automobile. Why do I say this? Because for me the relationship between someone who buys gasoline and someone who sells gasoline is mutual and a PR executive is even farther removed. Perhaps it isn’t for you. Perhaps someone else would consider all people of a certain ethnicity a target for murder and based on statistical evidence.
The point is that when you allow for individuals to come up with their own personal reasons for murdering a member of a certain group that you allow for an infinity of reasons and targets.
At least a few people picked up on this thread based on my original pithy comment.
> When he considered his targets for murder that is indeed a moral question for him.
But it's using his moral system, which was relative when it comes to murder.
It's not how you and I think about murder that matters.
> The point is that when you allow for individuals to come up with their own personal reasons for murdering a member of a certain group that you allow for an infinity of reasons and targets.
If you allow anyone to do so, then across all of them you'll see an infinity of reasons, yes.
But this isn't about allowing, and this is about a specific murderer. A specific murderer won't use an infinity of reasons.
> for me the relationship between someone who buys gasoline and someone who sells gasoline is mutual
Let's just assess harm here and not talk about murder or anything. I don't think Ted K had much reason to disagree with this statement. But you're missing a crucial factor. The consumer buys one lifetime supply of gas. The producer sells a million. If we split the blame equally for each transaction, then each consumer has .5 blame units and the producer has 500 thousand blame units.
