> Personally I feel that there are no heroes and everyone sucks in this situation, except for the innocent bystanders on both sides who are being caught in the crossfire.
Wow, what a daring and brave opinion. I'm in awe that you're willing to share it publically!
Like, a bunch of my local social media bubble has been talking about "media literacy" and "illiteracy" and related concepts and this is a great example.
If, for example, someone is telling you that a publically terrible act of violence by someone associated with palestine is probably a response to previous israeli actions, they are not, in fact, secretly trying to imply that the terrorist is a hero.
They're simply trying to explain the likely consequences of actions.
One of the things that I find most frustrating in certain types of discussions is the idea that we can't do something that will improve the lives of large numbers of people on the off chance that a bad person won't get punished or someone undeserving will be rewarded.
It's entirely probable that the solution that improves the lives of the most people in that region will also involve quite a few awful people not getting punished.
The point of course is that it's not about whether or not guilty people escape.
It's about making people's lives better. Improving the world. Increasing the net total happiness. That sort of thing.
If you actually apply logic and empiricism with that as your goal you quickly realize that punishing guilty people is frankly orthogonal.
This is definitely something I have found to be a major divider among people, in the very literal "there are two types of people" sense.
Very frequently having some system of punishments and then applying those punishments has some useful effect towards the ultimate goal of better lives for everyone. But, as should hopefully be obvious, the point is the better life goal, not the punishment part.
People get very obsessed with the idea of people "getting what they deserve" and so rarely seem to consider any goal beyond satiating the desire for suffering.
Everyone loves the classic "moral dilemma" of torturing one child to provide for millions and similar, but perhaps instead what we should be asking is "would you let an awful evil pedophile go free if it meant a better life for hundreds of other children"? That seems like a fun way to get people's heads to explode.
Wow, what a daring and brave opinion. I'm in awe that you're willing to share it publically!
Like, a bunch of my local social media bubble has been talking about "media literacy" and "illiteracy" and related concepts and this is a great example.
If, for example, someone is telling you that a publically terrible act of violence by someone associated with palestine is probably a response to previous israeli actions, they are not, in fact, secretly trying to imply that the terrorist is a hero.
They're simply trying to explain the likely consequences of actions.
One of the things that I find most frustrating in certain types of discussions is the idea that we can't do something that will improve the lives of large numbers of people on the off chance that a bad person won't get punished or someone undeserving will be rewarded.
It's entirely probable that the solution that improves the lives of the most people in that region will also involve quite a few awful people not getting punished.