Zero Punctuation: inFamous
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Wow, every argument you've ever heard must have been 101% logically sound, then.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
If you could kill one innocent man to save ten thousand innocents, wouldn't you? I sure as hell would. If you don't, it's as if you killed those ten thousand yourself. 10,000 innocent lives > 1 innocent life. It's simple, mathematical logic.
Now let's say it's not one innocent man. It's one terrible, evil man. And you don't need to kill him, you just need to make him extremely uncomfortable for a few minutes. Anyone who wouldn't do this to save ten thousand lives is a horrible, horrible person. You're willing to sacrifice ten thousand innocent people just to keep your hands clean and claim to be the bigger man. That disgusts me.
As opposed to all of those forms of government that don't use force or the threat of force to enforce their laws? I can't believe you just mocked my 100% logically sound argument for being "the worst argument you have ever heard" and then used this monumentally awful argument in your very next paragraph.
The very nature of governments is that they create a large enough power base to utilize threats of force in order to make people fall in line. "If you break our laws, we're going to forcibly take you and punish you somehow."
Civil rights and a phoenix or something.Chipperz said:
It's actually really hilarious, though, that you can go to almost any Zero Punctuation thread and if you skip ahead to the end of the discussion, you'll find a debate going. Something about Yahtzee just makes people want to bite each other's head's off.
Is this a phoenix that can just come back to life like Harry Potter or one that leaves an egg in it's ashes? Also, are we talking regular bird size, or something huge? The difference could be important...Citrus Insanity said:
I think Yahtzee would be happy with the ammount of chaos he;s spreading
This game was in Blockbuster, but I never rented it because lets face it, most of the games released these days are crap. Personally I don't like these good vs evil games and Yahtzee makes a good point about how having to be totally good or totally bad just forces you to play the game twice; something I don't have time to do anymore. 95% of the time, I beat a game once and that's it; I move on.
*sigh*Pellucid said:
Anyway, I got the game yesterday. It really is very good. The game- world loads up behind the menu- screen, and when you play start you're in. Right there, game- engine starts, and it only leaves very temporarily for some of the comic- strip sequences - and then morph back into the game- engine again. It's good. It's really, really good. Not too sure about the karma- moments, though. lol. But the way it's done.. how you slow down and hear Cole's thoughts, it makes sense.
edit: *politics warning* if anyone thinks I'm exaggerating about how a frighteningly large part of the US works, take a look at this:
http://gawker.com/5286615/right+wingers-blame-left+wingers-and-muslims-for-holocaust-museum-shooting
(Glenn Beck, who isn't the worst of them all by any means, explains how the recent Holocaust museum shooting is just a small taste of what's coming... uh.. due to the dire situation the nation is in, and so on. Note that it's just a week since an abortion- doctor was shot - the second attempt at his life was successful, while he survived the first - and none of the pro- lifers are actually apologetic about it. Actually, some of them are the opposite, even in public. The reactions here mirrors that situation perfectly
Anyway - the most interesting part of this is the framing Beck does. It's one that doesn't actually examine any points of views, or finding what they argue for. It's not even asking any questions about the purpose of any of it - he's merely registering that something to the right of... Hitler spliced with Pinochet exists, and then explains how this must make perfect sense. And this is considered by many to be balanced. As opposed to unapologetic justification for extremism, for example.
I mean, I suppose it would be just as scary if they were arguing for free ice- cream and longer holidays in the same way, but.. ok, maybe it wouldn't. The approach would still be wrong, though).
Because that's the end result. I don't have the same faith you do that there's a "right thing" and a "wrong thing" to do that isn't about pure numbers. To me, when you make that decision, it's as good as if you were making a decision to kill either one man personally or kill ten thousand men personally. Your decision to let those people die is as good as a decision to kill them yourself. It's pure numbers. In my mind, the ethical thing to do in every situation is whatever would cause the best end result for the largest possible number of innocent people.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
"Sacred?" You sound like an evangelical. Civil rights aren't sacred; they're a tool. A tool to be used when it promotes justice, and to be discarded when it does not. I don't hear you clamoring to protect the right to liberty of convicted serial killers. You've discarded the tool of "civil liberties" because it works toward the greater good of society in that instance to toss it aside and lock up a bad man who will do bad things. I'm not sure why you'd refuse to toss the tool aside in the case of a terrorist.
First of all, it's extremely arguable that waterboarding is torture. It does no known permanent damage to the people it is performed on. It doesn't leave people scarred, and it does no physical damage to the body at all. Second of all, no conservative I know claims that waterboarding isn't a moral negative, so you're making a strawman argument here. We understand that waterboarding someone is a cruel thing to do, but we also understand that sometimes good men need to learn how to be cruel to put a halt to the evil in the world.
That's not true. That's what tyrannical governments do. Fascism is a very specific set of governmental and legal practices. It is not inherent to the system that it be abused, that's just frequently the end result. Oh, and if the government is "using force to make sure people don't exercise their legal rights," then they're not legal rights, now, are they? The only argument you can make is that they're preventing the exercise of divine rights, but I'd imagine you won't make that argument. Correct me if I'm wrong.
There's no difference between any of those things. They all boil down to "do what I say or I'll hurt you." It's just that in a Democracy we come to a consensus that we have to hurt you, whereas in a dictatorship there's just one guy who decides whether or not it's time to hurt you.
I see what you did there. You're so clever! I bet nobody has ever thought to use sarcasm to imply that someone's legitimate complaint is just the whining of someone with their feelings hurt before!Sillyiggy said:
Man, with powerhouse intellects like yours on the side of the Democrats, we can't win!
Sarcasm: It's so easy a caveman could do it. Now I'm as clever as you are!