Moderation Questions and General Chat Thread
The last iteration of the moderation discussion thread was a complete disaster. Numerous attempts to keep it on topic failed, and it became a general discussion thread with almost no moderation related posts at all. And those that were posted were so buried in non-mod posts that it became a huge time drain on the mods to sort through them. Then, when off topic posts were deleted posters complained about that.
This led to the closing of the mod discussion thread, replaced by the post report/pm approach. This has filtered out lots of noise, but has resulted at times in the General Discussion Thread turning into a quasi-mod thread. This is not desirable, but going back to the old mod thread is also not a workable option.
Therefore, I have created this new moderation thread, but with a different purpose and ground rules than previous mod threads. The purpose of this thread is to provide a place for posters to pose questions to the mods about how policies are applied; to bring to the mods attention posts they think are inappropriate and reach the level of requiring mod action; and for mods to communicate to posters things like changes or clarifications to policies, bannings, etc.
Now let me tell you what this thread is NOT a place for. It is not for nonmoderation related posts, even if the discussion originates from a comment in in a mod related post. It is not for posters to post their opinions about other posters or whether a poster should be banned. It is not to rehash past grievances about mod decisions from months or years ago. The focus of this thread will be recent posts that require action now. Or questions about current policies and enforcement.
So basically, this is a thread to ask mods questions. Which means, pretty much that only mods should be answering those questions. If a poster asks why a particular post was deleted or allowed, only a mod can answer that. Everyone else who wants to jump in with their opinion or their mod war story needs to stay out of it. It just increases the noise to signal ratio and does nothing to answer the question.
Everyone needs to understand that this thread has very different rules than the old mod thread and any other thread. Any non-moderation post will be deleted on sight. Not moved to the appropriate thread, just deleted. So don't waste your time crafting a masterpiece post about wars or transgender issues or the presidential election and then post it in this thread. It will be gone. Also, this isnt a thread for general commentary about our mods performance. Posting "browser sucks as a mod" or any such posts that don't actually ask about a policy or request a mod action will be deleted. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the moderation of this forum. But this thread isnt for complaining about mods. You are free to go to the ATF forum and make your concerns about modding in this forum there.
So with that intro, this thread is open for those who need to bring questions about mod policies or bring inappropriate posts to the mods attention. Again, it is NOT a thread for group discussions about other posters or for other posters to answer questions directed to mods.
We'll see how this goes. If you have what you feel is an open issue raised in the General Discussion Thread, please copy that post or otherwise reintroduce the issue here.
Thanks.
6491 Replies
If I supported the allies in WW2, I supported killing babies?
Were the allies indiscriminately fire bombing and nuclear bombing cities?
I believe they were.
not the Soviets!
Yep, the Soviets/Russians are the real humanitarians in every conflict.
As a matter of pure logic, this is obviously wrong.
I can imagine a hypothetical just war in which military action was justified in order to prevent 5X civilian deaths, even though the military action itself would result in X civilian deaths.
Under your theory, that means the supporters of the military action support "killing babies," even though the net effect of the military action would be to save civilian lives, including the lives of babies.
Supporting war is very bad. Even if it means more people will die, supporting war is very bad
War, at its very fundamental roots, is humans killing humans, and that is bad
this isnt just any war
You think that supporting a military action that indisputably would have the net effect of saving a large number of innocent lives is obviously wrong? It could be wrong, but I don't think that it is inevitably wrong.
If you wanted to argue that such situations arise far less frequently than we imagine, I might agree, but that's a different point.
What do you mean? We aren't discussing a specific situation. We are discussing a pure hypothetical and a general principle.
Not a nuanced take. There have obviously been several wars in the last century where not engaging in conflict would have resulted in a much worse outcome.
By what metric
I guess it comes down to how you interpret luckbox's initial post. I took it to mean a war that intentionally and primarily targets children.
but, I also realize the discussion has moved to a more generalized hypothetical of war.
If some babies have to die to save other babies, and people aware of that and are still ok with it, then they support killing babies....as a matter of pure logic.
did we just do the trolly problem?
I disagree. In my hypothetical, it is entirely possible that the person supporting military action abhors killing babies, and for that reason, is choosing the course of action that results in the fewest killed babies.
In my hypothetical, there is no option C that avoids dead civilians.
Agree
They don’t abhor them enough not to support the war though.
According to your theory, if I invented a miraculous, anti-air pollution machine that removed pollution from the atmosphere at four times the rate it added pollution to the atmosphere, and had no other negative impact on the environment, then anyone who supported the use of my machine would be properly described as "supporting" air pollution.
That’s not how your analogy works.
You’re saying we need to kill children because it will possibly prevent more deaths later
A machine that adds pollution while cleaning 4x as much is a whole different animal
Option C is called being a pacifist. Such people do exist. Not me. If a bunch of babies are coming at me wanting me dead I'm taking them out.
Your position is that it's the net impact that's important not individual cases, but I agree with those who say that people and molecules are different enough that your analogy does not fit.
For one-- pollution is fungible. One molecule of pollutant is the same as any other, like how currency works. People are not fungible though.
Would you state this outside of internet anonymity? I'm not trying to do a "gotcha". I really don't know and am curious because people so many hold opinions which they won't even own up to on the internet, let alone in public. The need for claiming the moral high ground for a position is so strong with people, even when they know damn well their aims are wrong in any meaningful sense of the word.
David Duke will not admit to being a racist. He thinks different races should live separately. He has endless criticisms of every aspect of anything associated with any non white people, wants total racial segregation, but is not a racist and is really promoting peace according to him.
This is right. I know Victor came back and as KoNY said, I could come back,
But maybe some of this too. I haven't been following the thread, so I haven't been sucked in. And the bolded is certainly true.
I said only that there is no option C that avoided killing civilians. I am aware the strict pacifism is an option. It isn't a defensible option imo if the consequences of pacifism are extreme enough, and the consequences of military action are favorable enough, but it is of course an option.
Not necessarily. It could be a near instant result. Imagine that you, Pointless Words, are POTUS. You receive 100% credible information that terrorists have gained control of an airliner from Europe and are committed and have the means to disperse a deadly bioweapon over New York City. Experts estimate that the bioweapon will cause 100,000 civilians to die. The terrorists have fifty innocent civilians on board the airliner, including five small children. The plane will reach NYC in ten minutes. U.S. fighter jets have been scrambled. If the fighter jets shoot down the airliner, the bioweapon will disperse harmlessly over the ocean, but all the civilians on the airliner of course will die. Do you give the order to shoot down the airliner or do you choose to let 100,000 civilians in NYC die in ten minutes? In my hypothetical, these are the only two options.
Your hypothetical sucks