Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Genocide in all possible worlds

Kalika again!


This is seriously out of context, but I can´t help quoting it anyway, LOL. From liberal atheist Richard Carrier´s blog. 

>>>So the question really comes down to: what if, in the unusual exception case, detente is for some reason not rationally possible? Imagine, e.g., ants can only survive by eating people (that isn’t the case and would not plausibly ever be, but that’s why these conflict-states are extremely bizarre and thus will always be extremely rare, and thus operate like “life boat” scenarios as I mention in my new article, where moral rules will change because the conditions have changed). What do we do then? If detente is truly impossible (e.g. no arrangement can be made whereby ants eat only our natural-course dead and thus no net harm results) then we’re back to total war.

>>>In that outcome-state, the only rational recourse is to genocide the opposition. That this is a “possible moral outcome” in absurdly extreme conditions will be used by genociders to justify just any genocide—by the conflation fallacy that if genocide is ever right, it is right whenever they say it is, e.g. irrational false beliefs will then form by which genocide appears to be the only rationally correct move, which is why genocide in practice always requires extremely bizarre false beliefs about people and the world. But the error there is that any pro-genocide camp is always going to be ignorant or irrational and thus wrong. Israelis don’t need to eat live, screaming Gazans to stay alive. Israelis aren’t sentient brain-eating zombies or desperate vampires who can’t survive on banked blood.

>>>This is obvious when realized in any artistic medium. “Nuking the site from orbit” is obviously the morally correct move in Aliens, but just as obviously not the morally correct move in Enemy Mine, while it is ambiguous only for want of information or explored alternatives in Phase IV and Transcendence. But apes don’t have these kinds of intolerable conflicts. All ape conflicts are fabricated by ignorance or irrationality, and thus always rationally best resolved by just being reasonable (witness: the entire plot of WarGames).

1 comment:

  1. In or out of context? It just struck me that Carrier´s comments could be read as a critique of those who want to genocide *Israelis*, not Gazans. Does he actually support Israel in the Gaza War?

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