Help me align my moral standards

[Vault101]

I don't think you can quantify it like that. It isn't the amount of "evil" you do; it is the fact that you did an "evil" act that matters in a morality sense(which is what you are going for from what I understand). If you must I am sure you could look up sentencing for each of those charges. I am not going to say "it takes 4 class B Felonies to make an A felony, but it only takes 3 class A Felonies to equal a class S Felony" or something to that effect.

Here is why:

Child Rape is the worst (it is not only a violent transgression but a destruction of innocence and future potential)

Wow, using that logic I can argue murdering a 20-year-old woman is worse than murdering 92-year-old man.

you know what? people would probably agree with that, our lives become less valuble as we age, acording to society

 

[Vault101]

one thing I dont understand is if there is any morality in regards to being a misanthrope

 

[JoJo]

Wow, using that logic I can argue murdering a 20-year-old woman is worse than murdering 92-year-old man.

I agree with that logic, as the younger someone is when they get murdered the more (on average) life they will have lost, so ignoring other factors apart from age murdering a 20 year old is worse than murdering a 92 year old.

As for the question posed in the OP, I'd say that murder is generally worse than rape as at-least with rape the victim has a chance to recover whereas with murder it's impossible for them to ever be brought back. However there are exceptions to this, since children are inherently more valuable child rape can be worse than murder depending on factors, so while the murder of a 5 year old girl is worse than the rape of a 5 year old girl, that rape is still worse than say the murder of a 80 year old woman.

That's all my opinion of course, there's no way to quantify these things precisely without making some assumptions beforehand so OP will have to decide for themselves their own moral standards.

 

[MammothBlade]

This popped up in my mind after I saw a dicussion in another thread and now I want to know your opinion.

As far as I know:

Piracy is bad.
Murder is bad.
Rape is bad.
Child Rape is bad.
Tax Evasion is bad.
But of course they are not equally bad.

Questions:

Is child rape worse that murder? Why?
Yes? Then how many murders equals one child rape?
No? Then how many child rapes equal one murder?

Is child rape worse than murder?

Let's see, rape can cause massive psychological trauma which may lead to mental illness and ultimately, if left untreated, suicide. The act itself constitutes violent and forced sexual contact, of varying severity. Yet the taboo and stigma surrounding rape attribute greater severity than say, violent crime which objectively causes an even greater amount of physical harm, for several social reasons. I think it's actually unfair on victims of rape to overstate its severity, society makes them damaged goods who have undergone an ordeal worse than death in some cases.

Murder is a malevolent, wrongful act of killing, and by its nature deprives people of life; and families and friends of their loved ones. Whilst I don't believe that all killing is murder, and there are genuine circumstances in which killing people is justified (euthanasia, capital punishment, self-defence) by default killing an innocent person is murder, and thus wrong. It causes more collateral damage than rape, considering that rapees can still live perfectly normal, happy lives as long as society accepts them.

On the balance of that, I would say that murder is a more severe crime. However, rape constitutes a certain kind of violent offence which should be punished severely, and which justifies lethal self-defence.

 

[ramboondiea]

I have no intention of writing some big long post explaining all my moral peculiarities so I will just bullet point them.

murder is worst then rape- i honestly dont know how people can think otherwise, if your dead thats the end,and you (probably) no longer exist nothing ever again.

child rape is worst then normal rape, but i think it could potentially worse then murder (i dont really ant to give it too much thought) and not worst then killing a child.

piracy- not always bad, depends on what ones considers piracy, actual piracy (i.e Somalians) that is just all bad.

tax aversion- depends on context, some aspect of tax law are pretty unfair and if you can find a legal loop hole i say go for it

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

[...]

Wow, using that logic I can argue murdering a 20-year-old woman is worse than murdering 92-year-old man.

you know what? people would probably agree with that, our lives become less valuble as we age, acording to society

People might agree but I don't.
I don't think you can value younger life higher than older life. A life is a life is a life (or something like that) Only because people are afraid of death some think being older is less worth than being younger but I think our senior people would disagree, strongly.

[...] I think it's actually unfair on victims of rape to overstate its severity, society makes them damaged goods who have undergone an ordeal worse than death in some cases.[...]

That is a very interesting point I have to consider. For the time being I agree. Thank you for sharing.

 

[crudus]

you know what? people would probably agree with that, our lives become less valuble as we age, acording to society

I agree with that logic, as the younger someone is when they get murdered the more (on average) life they will have lost, so ignoring other factors apart from age murdering a 20 year old is worse than murdering a 92 year old.

Ok, I am not going to re-post a response I already wrote. You can read it <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.319713-Help-me-align-my-moral-standards#13049522>here. Life isn't on a gradient. It is either on or off. You can't say which member of society is more valuable unless you are George Bailey. You certainly can't say that someone is more valuable solely because they have longer to live.

 

[maotad]

What is more/less acceptable is decided by society. Morals develop over time, and they are dictated by the group with more power, so something that is acceptable by today's standards, might not be in the future as society evolves.
For instance how can murder be as bad as,for instance rape(just an example, not my actual moral standard), if thousands are being killed in wars, but people just go with it, since they think that its somehow justified, but when somebody cries rape, everybody and their dog starts sharpening their pitchforks.

 

[JoJo]

I agree with that logic, as the younger someone is when they get murdered the more (on average) life they will have lost, so ignoring other factors apart from age murdering a 20 year old is worse than murdering a 92 year old.

Ok, I am not going to re-post a response I already wrote. You can read it <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.319713-Help-me-align-my-moral-standards#13049522>here. Life isn't on a gradient. It is either on or off. You can't say which member of society is more valuable unless you are George Bailey. You certainly can't say that someone is more valuable because they have longer to live.

I disagree, some people are worth more than others due to their remaining years. inherent innocence or actions during life. Below I have included some rough guidelines for my personal order of worth, from highest to lowest:

Children
Teens or young adults or parents/guardians to a child
Non-parent adult
Middle aged
Elderly
Criminals who have caused a lot of harm (but not quite as bad as the below)
Murderers, torturers and violent rapists
Sentient animals
Non-sentient animals
Plants and all other non-animal organisms

This is only rough of course and other factors do measure into worth too, parents get a boost as it's very harmful for a child to lose or be seperated from a parent, while serious criminals get moved downwards due to their lack of respect for other people's rights. Other life-forms come below. Murdering someone higher up the list would be worse in my opinion.

 

[HardkorSB]

Piracy is bad.

If it wasn't for piracy, I would never be able to find my favorite music and movies. I would probably be stuck with whatever TV and the radio (but mainly TV) gives me.
In Poland, the average wage is around £250-300. The average new game is around £40. Buying a new game is something you do 1-2 times per year. Without the ability to pirate it and try it out, it would be hard to get a good game. Sure, some people will stick with pirated games and won't buy a new one but they wouldn't buy the new one anyway so there's no loss for the company.
Same thing with music. Right now, I listen to bands like The Bamboos, Quantic Soul Orchestra or The Speedometer. Never heard of them? Me neither until I've downloaded their earlier albums through pirate sites out of curiosity.
If the product s good enough, the people who pirated it will give profit to the makers at some point.

Is child rape worse that murder? Why?
Yes? Then how many murders equals one child rape?

That reasoning is kid of twisted.

Is an apple better than an orange?
If so, how much oranges equal 1 apple?
See? Doesn't make sense.

Each crime has different motivations and different effects (aside from the obvious ones). I honestly think that the motivations and effects should be key in determining the punishment. Not just the social perceptions of said crime.

Think of Nico Bellic (GTA IV) or that moron from Fable. Take the "evil approach" <let's slaughter some innocent civilians just for fun>. The game character (NOT the player, I repeat I'm not talking about the player) has an (almost) unlimited potential to be cold hearted bloody bastard of a murderer. He could do some good but he remains a murderer in the first place (if played in that way) So he is far worse than someone who would rape a 14 year old girl or something, is he not?

The thing about that is, the character doesn't have to deal with the guilty conscience, the families of the victim NPC's won't seek revenge and you can just can do a bunch of crap to give everyone a +20 to liking you, making the -10 for murdering someone not matter.

Because like all things, crimes and law have different view points in the public eye. Its called an opinion. I view rape as worse than death. Some people dont. Just because they dont doesnt mean i have to as well. Some do commit suicide, a large portion do, some dont. Varying opinions. Again im not sure ID kill myself if i was raped, rather that if given the choice of brutal rape or death id choose death.

You're saying that only because you haven't experienced it.
Once you're dead, it's all over. Putting aside your beliefs regarding the afterlife, all that you know will be over. Rape is bad but you CAN recover from it. You can't recover from being dead. This is a personal opinion but if, AS AN ADULT, all it would take for you to end your life is to be raped, then you're just weak-minded and overly emotional.
What you're saying is that your life is worth less to you than (and I'm putting multiple quotation marks here for a reason) the """purity""" of your body.

 

[JoJo]

Wow, murderers, torturers, and rapists are more important than sentient animals? I don't like your hierarchy at all, but that seems craziest to me.

Well it is only my personal hierarchy, and yes I don't put much value into animal's lives, even those that are sentient. That's a good thing, otherwise I couldn't both oppose the death penalty and still eat meat without being a hypocrite! (Though morally I wouldn't object to certain murderers or child rapists to be executed, I oppose it for risk of killing innocent people and cost issues).

 

[DEAD34345]

I don't really think you can grade morality like that, and I don't think that particular actions can be inherently good or bad either. My view of morality is more along the lines of "Good = An action which creates more happiness than unhappiness in the world. Bad = An action which creates more unhappiness than happiness in the world.". It's very contextual.

Stealing is generally bad, but what about stealing a loaf of bread from a millionaire and giving it to a starving orphan?

Killing people is generally bad, but what about murdering a violent dictator who will kill thousands if left alive?

Rape is generally bad, but... uh... actually I can't really think of a situation where that might be a good thing. Maybe a bomb is somehow rigged to go off unless you... no, rape is pretty much universally bad.

 

[SilentCom]

Why do people feel the need to try and measure things up to each other all the time? If it's bad then don't do it. People can debate all they want about which ones are worse, just like they can debate what fruit is the best...

 

[crudus]

I disagree, some people are worth more than others due to their remaining years. inherent innocence or actions during life. Below I have included some rough guidelines for my personal order of worth, from highest to lowest:

Children
Teens or young adults or parents/guardians to a child
Non-parent adult
Middle aged
Elderly
Criminals who have caused a lot of harm (but not quite as bad as the below)
Murderers, torturers and violent rapists
Sentient animals
Non-sentient animals
Plants and all other non-animal organisms

This is only rough of course and other factors do measure into worth too, parents get a boost as it's very harmful for a child to lose or be seperated from a parent, while serious criminals get moved downwards due to their lack of respect for other people's rights. Other life-forms come below. Murdering someone higher up the list would be worse in my opinion.

So you are effectively calling someone worth less because they are sterile, don't have the money to support a child, or don't want children. Calling your guidelines "rough" is quite an understatement. What about criminals of victimless crimes or nonviolent offenders? War heroes? Amputees? Doctors? Organ donors? Smokers? Nuns? Priests? Whether they bought a car made in their country? To actually say "it is better to kill this person, but not this person", you can't say "because I say so" without being ignored. You have to put a lot of thought into it, and have legitimate reasons into why you rate a habitual marijuana smoker over a couch potato. Now what seems to really fuck with your system is a criminal who is a parent or a grandfather who is a legal guardian(real parents dead, etc).

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

Uuuuh, I'm beginning to love this thread.

[...]
The thing about that is, the character doesn't have to deal with the guilty conscience, the families of the victim NPC's won't seek revenge and you can just can do a bunch of crap to give everyone a +20 to liking you, making the -10 for murdering someone not matter.

I don't see your point. Well it's perfectly possible to implement that in a video game.
In Civ 4 you could drop the nuclear bomb on spearwielding barbarians just because you CAN and still nobody overthrows your government and puts you in jail (or excutes you right on the spot)
Imagine the president of France orders a nuclear strike against the innuit population of Greenland just because he loves babyseals and they have them as main dish...
You can't play as a rapist for reasons that are still beyond me and I still try to figure out why, while insane mass murdering stuff is alright and you get away with, without repercussions.

Why do people feel the need to try and measure things up to each other all the time? If it's bad then don't do it. People can debate all they want about which ones are worse, just like they can debate what fruit is the best...

I can speak for myself only, I like to think about such problems, they bother me and keep my thoughts spinning. In my opinion is a rather lame excuse to say: "If it's bad then don't do it." The church says that it is bad to have sex before marriage, so let's not do it?? That's as debatable as anything.

Of course you can compare an apple with an orange and you can compare several apples with one orange. That is definitely possible and has been done several times. That's why have apple plantations and orange plantations in the first place.

Back to the topic at hand,
our different law systems measure crimes differently. They have good reasons to do so. I'm not going to say they are doing a good/bad job. But someone has to do it in the end.
I'm not here to discuss the whole "death penalty" thing. I don't like that discussion, it's overused and blatantly boring.

Murdering a dictator is bad, if you resort to such measures you are hardly any better than her.
Raping a dictator is bad too, but at least you can sent her to trial afterwards.
Raping the dictator's little children is worse than raping him but less worse than murdering him. You can't measure the value (especially the future value) of a human being, because you don't know. You can help the kids though, so that they manage to recover (to an extent).

In the end, I just have the feeling that people get away with murder far more often than with rape. This shows in videogames as well.

So when playing I like to explore the dark side of a murdering bastard on a killing spree and people seem to barely even notice. Some people even support me to do so. Yeah, I know, it's only a bunch of pixels.
Now imagine that I would like to explore the dark, self-torturing side of a child-rapist plaqued by guilt, now that get's all people excited and it could get me into serious trouble. You know what, it's only a bunch of pixels again, but suddenly people start bringing arguments why this is soooooo bad.

This is frightening.

 

[SillyBear]

I think murdering innocent people in horible ways is the worst thing a human being can do. People can come back from rape. People can come back from abuse. People can't come back from death.

That's my way of thinking.

 

[JoJo]

I disagree, some people are worth more than others due to their remaining years. inherent innocence or actions during life. Below I have included some rough guidelines for my personal order of worth, from highest to lowest:

Children
Teens or young adults or parents/guardians to a child
Non-parent adult
Middle aged
Elderly
Criminals who have caused a lot of harm (but not quite as bad as the below)
Murderers, torturers and violent rapists
Sentient animals
Non-sentient animals
Plants and all other non-animal organisms

This is only rough of course and other factors do measure into worth too, parents get a boost as it's very harmful for a child to lose or be seperated from a parent, while serious criminals get moved downwards due to their lack of respect for other people's rights. Other life-forms come below. Murdering someone higher up the list would be worse in my opinion.

So you are effectively calling someone worth less because they are sterile, don't have the money to support a child, or don't want children. Calling your guidelines "rough" is quite an understatement. What about criminals of victimless crimes or nonviolent offenders? War heroes? Amputees? Doctors? Organ donors? Smokers? Nuns? Priests? Whether they bought a car made in their country? To actually say "it is better to kill this person, but not this person", you can't say "because I say so" without being ignored. You have to put a lot of thought into it, and have legitimate reasons into why you rate a habitual marijuana smoker over a couch potato. Now what seems to really fuck with your system is a criminal who is a parent or a grandfather who is a legal guardian(real parents dead, etc).

Yes, someone is worth less overall if they don't have their own children, as their child depends on them for care and love and will be severely hurt if the parent is lost, so overall killing a parent has more negative effect than killing a non-parent. Non-violent offenders weren't counted in my rating as they aren't different enough from law-abiding people to put on the scale at this distance, they would be treated exactly the same as normal. As for the parent/criminal duality, that would depend on the severity of their crime exactly where they would be placed. It is only a rough guide though and isn't intended to be exact, and I've backed-up all my statements with reasons, not just "I say so". I find it confusing you treat all lives as if they are worth the same, here's a dilemma for you:

If you had a choice between the following, what would you choose?

A) Innocent 5 year old girl dies
b) 35 year old murderer dies
c) 50/50 chance of either, decided at random by dice

 

[SilentCom]

Why do people feel the need to try and measure things up to each other all the time? If it's bad then don't do it. People can debate all they want about which ones are worse, just like they can debate what fruit is the best...

I can speak for myself only, I like to think about such problems, they bother me and keep my thoughts spinning. In my opinion is a rather lame excuse to say: "If it's bad then don't do it." The church says that it is bad to have sex before marriage, so let's not do it?? That's as debatable as anything.

Of course you can compare an apple with an orange and you can compare several apples with one orange. That is definitely possible and has been done several times. That's why have apple plantations and orange plantations in the first place.

Back to the topic at hand,
our different law systems measure crimes differently. They have good reasons to do so. I'm not going to say they are doing a good/bad job. But someone has to do it in the end.
I'm not here to discuss the whole "death penalty" thing. I don't like that discussion, it's overused and blatantly boring.

Murdering a dictator is bad, if you resort to such measures you are hardly any better than her.
Raping a dictator is bad too, but at least you can sent her to trial afterwards.
Raping the dictator's little children is worse than raping him but less worse than murdering him. You can't measure the value (especially the future value) of a human being, because you don't know. You can help the kids though, so that they manage to recover (to an extent).

In the end, I just have the feeling that people get away with murder far more often than with rape. This shows in videogames as well.

So when playing I like to explore the dark side of a murdering bastard on a killing spree and people seem to barely even notice. Some people even support me to do so. Yeah, I know, it's only a bunch of pixels.
Now imagine that I would like to explore the dark, self-torturing side of a child-rapist plaqued by guilt, now that get's all people excited and it could get me into serious trouble. You know what, it's only a bunch of pixels again, but suddenly people start bringing arguments why this is soooooo bad.

This is frightening.

The point I made "If it's bad, then don't do it" isn't based on other people's views but rather the view of the individual. If it seems bad to you, then don't do it.

Also, you stated "people get away with murder far more often than with rape." I think a reason as to why that happens is because 'dead men tell no tales' or otherwise, if the victim is murdered, then they can't exactly report the crime or give a description of the perpetrator. Criminals usually don't want people seeing them commit a crime, therefore unless they murder whomever they rape, the rape victim would likely be able to report them.

 

[crudus]

Yes, someone is worth less overall if they don't have their own children, as their child depends on them for care and love and will be severely hurt if the parent is lost, so overall killing a parent has more negative effect than killing a non-parent. Non-violent offenders weren't counted in my rating as they aren't different enough from law-abiding people to put on the scale at this distance, they would be treated exactly the same as normal. As for the parent/criminal duality, that would depend on the severity of their crime exactly where they would be placed. It is only a rough guide though and isn't intended to be exact, and I've backed-up all my statements with reasons, not just "I say so". I find it confusing you treat all lives as if they are worth the same, here's a dilemma for you:

If you had a choice between the following, what would you choose?

A) Innocent 5 year old girl dies
b) 35 year old murderer dies
c) 50/50 chance of either, decided at random by dice

I find it confusing that you seem to be haphazardly blanketing statements like that. I understand that you say it is a rough guide, but I am not sure you know just how detailed you are going to have to get with it to define values to people like that. Nothing is really as clear cut as you seem to think it is. I am fine with people assigning values to the lives of each person as long as it is done in a very meticulous, objective manner. Also, you seem to value people more if they got pregnant in their teens or very early twenties(maybe I am just reading too much into it).

Your dilemma is skewed to give you the answer you want. You very clearly value A more than B. If B wasn't a murderer or 5 was terminally ill, the answer to this question may reveal some meaningful data. However, I would choose C. If I directly chose to kill either of them, I wouldn't be any better than a murderer. I am more like a general sending troops into battle with C.

I think murdering innocent people in horible ways is the worst thing a human being can do. People can come back from rape. People can come back from abuse. People can't come back from death.

That's my way of thinking.

Spoiler: not yet

 

[manic_depressive13]

The things you listed are neither good nor bad. Some of them might upset or offend one's concept of fairness and justice, so it would be preferable if people didn't do them. You can't just let people tell you "child rape is worse that adult rape" or "the death of a human is worse than the death of an animal". You have to make your own judgements. If they don't bother you, they're not bad.