But if you can’t be a 100% perfect utilitarian at all times, you obviously shouldn’t even try. Either save the absolute maximum number of lives possible, or throw up your hands and say “Screw it, everyone dies.” /s

I’m a fan of effective altruism as a strategy for us non-superpowered folk to expand that circle.

Let’s hope everyone considers your definition of helping people as helping people too.

Oh, I’m very sorry. I misread what you wrote there. Sorry again.

I’m sorry I was too busy counting the people dying while Alison patiently waited for Max to finish his life story to acknowledge sarcasm.
You make assumptions about where my empathy lies, but these ones you don’t seem to mind seeing go.

This is an argument for you to realize your opinion is incoherent unless you go full blown Alison should drink Max’ blood to absorb his powers and use it better.
Which knowing you I’d suspect you may weigh the pros and cons, but not everyone here is so convinced that might makes right.

Yes that’s just what I said, your opinion is coherent because you would have been totally for Alison coercing Max as soon as she was through the door. It’s not really you I’m trying to push toward a realization that this is absolutely terrifying and insane.

Most people hopefully realize “wait no I wouldn’t approve of Alison not even asking him, this is utter tyranny. And I’m against that. But how can I justify defending her actions on the grounds of people saved, if I can’t justify not even speaking to him on the same grounds? Maybe it’s because I didn’t really think this through.”

But sure when one is not against tyranny, it works.

The reason is not because of the number of people who die per minute, though: that adds up linearly.
Rather, it’s about the perceived chance of a (preferable) peaceful solution being reached, which plummets as your attemps fail and then bottoms out.

So according to you presenting the pretense of caring is time well spent (and people well dead) but making a conscious effort not to fall into totalitarian trappings is way too much to ask.
Right.

Here’s the thing: ultimately you established that you didn’t care about the answer. A “yes” is neat but as a “no” leads to coercion in your system, it’s only superfluous and hypocritical. At some point you’ve just got to admit to yourself you’re okay with tyranny.

Just start twisting their arms, if they wanted to help to start with they’ll just follow the motion harmlessly instead of resisting. Some good utilitarian minutes saved!

Do you want to go on a date with me?
Disclaimer: if you say no I’mma kidnap you and make you.

This is totally not coercion regardless of yoir choice.

No it’s not about utility or what have you, it’s about knowing in advance about the threat of coercion. It kind of ruins the validity of any sort of consent. A choice made under duress isn’t one.

Which, again, makes total sense in the world were practicality is more important than free will.

My, this governmental system of yours is just lovely. I wonder who gets the helm.

Clem likes to distract – look at their request to me to stop “equating” weakness and mental illness, when I did no such thing.

Everything after their “So according to you” was a deliberate misrepresentation of your position. I wish people were better at spotting such things – it would be great if ten people responded to that with “Well, Clem, you’ve just lost all credibility with me.” But, sadly, that’s not how people seem to work.

Kellyanne Conway uses tactics like that. I don’t know what to do when people like that are in talky positions. At some point one just has to say “Your discourse is abusive and I won’t stand for it” but saying that explicitly is a good way to “lose” a discussion in American society.

If you stop engaging the Kellyannes and the Clems of the world, they create their own echo chamber, then accuse you of being in one. If you engage them, they tend to drag you down to their level – and the slightest slip on your part is magnified by them for the delectation of their audience. If you don’t slip, they invent a slip. Meanwhile, they use whatever tactics they like, and somehow your calling them on it never lands.

Gaah. I’m pretty disgusted with it.

It’s because you’ve been doing a constant back and forth between not realizing the gravity of the consequences of your opinions and denying them outright when presented to you. You’ve admitted being pro-benevolent tyranny except in any and all instances where the distinction between that and a more sensible worldview actually arises. Like the way you can’t accept that utilitarianism and justice can’t reconcile. Because they’re made not to.

No, I care about context. This is why I’ve been for the use of violence to make Max do his thing this whole time and you never noticed.

My genuine bad. I really, sincerely don’t mean to. Seems I can’t help it even when I really try. This is when I actually use my “mental illness trump card” as a desperate plea to state that it’s not my fault, even though I know this is no better.

Well would you look at who’s doing the whiny ad hominem. Nevermind that contrary to you I only mentionned it once and only in passing while you’ve decided to make it the entire crux of your case against me.
And “I did no such thing”! Gosh, I have to explain everything. See I never said you equated weak with sociopath, I said that you used both as derogatory value judgements. It’s pretty fucking lame to think negatively of a person you’d call “weak” to start with, but okay, whatever. But it’s extremely fucking outrageous to think negatively of people with mental disorders.

Oh but this is a tactic, right? This is me resorting to unfair tricks when confronted with the brilliance of your dumb argument that people are dying and we should violently force people to prevent it. (Like I’m guessing some trump will say this comment is abusive? Like me being genuinely pissed gives me the power advantage to bully people somehow?)
Well. I’m sorry, but my mental illness is not something I use as an ace.

Alison was under duress.

Think about it. Max may as well have been saying “Beat me into it or I will kill all these people.” By NOT taking that action in the past he’s also basically a mass-murderer. You may say “are we all mass murderers then?” But we don’t all have that kind of power. Great power, great responsibility.

And if you bring up the bad action v inaction thing… I’m with Gurwara 2 on this. What is this special place reserved for inaction?

…Really?

Okay, I gotta pause here, how many people actually think twisting some guy’s arm for five minutes is torture? “ripping out your nails” torture.

Because you know what is torture? Cancer. You know what is torture? Liver failure. Any time an organ is collapsing. It’s torture to feel your abdomen scream every time you have to go to the bathroom, it’s torture to feel your chest tighten every time you sit up and to wonder is this the time? Is this it? Am I dying now, or do I get to wait until after lunch? It’s torture to slowly see a little less and a little less until you can’t enjoy a drawing your child made of you anymore. It’s torture to have to walk slowly and with support not because your legs are weak but because if you walk faster your breathing might be insufficient and you get dizzy and collapse. It’s torture to live day in and day out with this specific food and twenty pills until you die.

It’s torture to see your loved ones collapsing because their bodies are too weak. To see them accept that their lives are over. I could go on.

But, you know, twisting some guy’s arm to get him to stop that? Geez, back off fascist! A right Nazi we have over here, with the arm-twisting! What great a crime.

“torture is inflicting pain on someone as a punishment or in order to force them to do something. ”

You know what, I’m going to keep biting this bullet here. Max was trying to inflict psychological pain (the sorrow of being partially responsible for the deaths of LITERALLY COUNTLESS PEOPLE) on Alison, as a punishment because she “always got her way”/”was mean in the end of their date”/literally just out of spite?

If something so slight as ARM TWISTING, which people do while wrestling over beer all the time, is considered torture here, then surely the psychological trauma of being partially responsible for the deaths of COUNTLESS PEOPLE must be considered torture. The former is done in a few minutes, the latter will haunt you for the rest of your life.

Not to mention that by such a permissive definition… literally every time a cop restrains somebody who struggles they are torturing a civilian. Heck, by such a permissive definition most prisoners endure torture, as do most schoolchildren and also most people in the army, and also most people who have rowdy siblings who get vengeful over toys. At which point this stops looking like a warcrime and starts looking like “just something people do when their authority is defied stubbornly sometimes”.

“Okay, I gotta pause here, how many people actually think twisting some guy’s arm for five minutes is torture? “ripping out your nails” torture.”

Slamming a person’s head against a table, twisting their arm with the intent of BREAKING the arm and wrist, while telling them you are going to kill them if they do not comply…. that’s torture. Tell you what….. see how your opinion changes if it happens to you.

But no, you seem like the type of person who is very tough when it’s someone ELSE being attacked and forced.

“Because you know what is torture? Cancer.”

I missed the part of the storyline where Max apparently causes people to have cancer.

“You know what is torture? Liver failure.”

I missed the part of the storyline where Max causes people to have liver failure.

News flash. Cancer and liver failure are not torture. They’re diseases and illnesses. You have this very odd idea of definition of words, yet when someone equates the mentality of a rapist with the mentality of what Alison was doing, then you’re a dictionary because in the latter, sex was not involved (despite that it’s about mentality, and the mentality of a rapist is about power, not sex).

“Any time an organ is collapsing. It’s torture to feel your abdomen scream every time you have to go to the bathroom, it’s torture to feel your chest tighten every time you sit up and to wonder is this the time? Is this it? Am I dying now, or do I get to wait until after lunch?”

Again, not ‘torture.’ What Alison did was torture. What you’re describing is disease and illness. If my appendix is rupturing, I’m not being ‘tortured.’ If I’m having an aneurysm, I’m not being tortured. And I sure as hell am not entitled to hurt other people because I’m in pain, unless that person is causing the pain.

” It’s torture to have to walk slowly and with support not because your legs are weak but because if you walk faster your breathing might be insufficient and you get dizzy and collapse”

Aging is not torture either. Nor is arthritis or asthma. When you get the flu, it’s not because the virus is torturing you. When you have allergies, the pollen count isn’t torturing you. If you fall on the sidewalk and break your leg, the sidewalk did not torture you.

“It’s torture to live day in and day out with this specific food and twenty pills until you die.”

Having dietary needs and medication is not torture.

“It’s torture to see your loved ones collapsing because their bodies are too weak. To see them accept that their lives are over. I could go on.”

The life cycle is not torture.

“But, you know, twisting some guy’s arm to get him to stop that? Geez, back off fascist! A right Nazi we have over here, with the arm-twisting! What great a crime.”

You do remember the part where she said she was going to kill him and drop him in the Atlantic Ocean after breaking his arm and wrist if he did not comply, right? Yes, it was torture.

How about giving a little electrocution until he complies. No long-lasting damage if done in small bursts of electricity. Just hurts. Not torture? Oh wait, yes it is. How about dunking him underwater until he complies. Is a little water torture? Oh wait, yes it is.

That’s kind of the point? This is not my comparison. Guest here is saying that Alison is under duress. Which is so wildly misguided an assessment of the power dynamic at play it’s difficult to answer anything else than push the absurdity further until its flaws are even more obvious.

Oh, Alison definitely has more power in this situation, by several orders of magnitude (an order of magnitude of orders of magnitude?). But… so what? My claim wasn’t that she was the weaker person in the room. My claim was that she was under duress. I hold that she was. Decisions made under duress are decisions in which one of the choices is kind of unfeasible to make. “Do I do this thing or do I get myself killed”, for example.

How exactly is that different from “Do I leave this alone or do I get countless other people killed”? And how is that difference making the choice less bad?

Max may as well have had a bomb and his finger on the trigger, and said “I’m going to do this just to piss you off.” Heck, not just one bomb, hundreds, if we’re just talking total death toll. Would you approve of Al twisting someone’s arm to stop 9/11? Because that was like… 3000ish people. Heart disease alone kills some 610,000 in a year. In the US. That’s… some 200 9/11s of dead people averted in one year because somebody got their arm twisted. Add to that, say, lung cancer why not, that’s another 155,870 deaths estimated for this year by Cancer.org… 255ish 9/11s? Just for her hearts and lungs.

How is “you can avert 250+ 9/11s or you can be nice to this one guy who doesn’t want to” a choice any more than “you can do this thing or I can drop you in the ocean” is a choice?

The special place is that we value people’s individual priorities and their freedom to choose.

No problem- though I’m rarely on anyone’s side but my own.

I nearly left a probably too aggressive reply to one of your other comments on the topic, and seeing your tone here, I can see your headspace wouldn’t benefit from that aggression at the moment. But I seriously do recommend that you think about whether talking here is doing you any (and other people) good.

You do say some pretty illogical and fallacious stuff, and ultimately you choose to do so, at least by coming here. It is your responsibility to keep that behaviour in check, take the good with the bad from deciding to talk here, etc. Judging by your reply here, you’re not feeling too good about yourself at the moment. Even disregarding responsibility,people won’t stop criticising you for that behaviour (they don’t really care why you do it regardless of if they should, let’s be honest)- maybe you’d benefit from taking some sort of break? Lord knows I need to sometimes.

Campaigning against a bad person acquiring high office and engaging in heated debate with people who are unlikely to be convinced aren’t really both going to have similar levels of impact. Especially if the latter was giving you problems. You don’t need to talk here to talk in real life.

But… that doesn’t change anything about inaction vs bad action!

If you value people’s individual priorities and their freedom to choose so much, you should value Max’s freedom to literally get out a machine gun in the middle of a hospital and kill everyone there. It would definitely cause fewer deaths (probably just a couple hundred, if he’s good at it?).

If you think oh, I value Max’s freedom but only up until the point that he’s not hurting anybody, what makes the thing that would cause a couple hundred deaths worse than the thing that would cause several 9/11s worth?

Why is it okay to punish somebody for bad action but not for inaction? And if it’s not okay to punish somebody for bad action either… are you some form of anarchist? We have incentives and disincentives for behaviour for a reason.

You don’t seem to have the slightest idea of what ‘duress’ means.

At no time was Alison under duress. Really wanting someone to do something is not ‘duress.’ Please learn what words mean before using the. Duress is the threat of harm made to compe a person to do something against his or her will or judgment.’ Alison was not under duress at all. In fact, the only person under duress was Max. Feral wasn’t. Alison wasn’t. The doctors harvesting organs weren’t.

Also, NOT doing something is not murder unless you caused the problem in which people would die in the first place.

Otherwise, you’re a murderer if you are not an organ donor on your ID. And an awful person. How dare you not be willing to donate your organs when you’d be dead anyway. /sarcasm

For that matter, you’re an awful person and a murderer, if you don’t donate blood once a month. There’s no danger to you whatsoever and you’d be saving lives. Practically a serial killer. /sarcasm

I despise them, but why would I do that?

You’re making a lot of erroneous assumptions about my ethics by calling that “following through.”

I will not be shooting neo-nazis because I don’t believe that randomly shooting terrible people will benefit the world enough to justify murder.

I think you really need to reread the comment you initially responded to. I said that all governed human societies already rely on the threat of force to coerce people into acting for the greater good.

Assassinating politicians would not magically transform the nation into my personal utopia. That would be a stupid, pointless endeavor that would only serve to turn the dead politician into a martyr while someone equally terrible stepped up to fill their shoes.

There are many less stupid ways for me to effect change, most of which don’t involve violence and most of which I can only carry out if I’m not in jail forever for assassinating politicians. The fact that I believe violence can be justified when it averts serious harm doesn’t mean that violence is the only strategy in my toolbox, or that I’m required to resort to it at every opportunity.

I really do not appreciate you inventing some warped strawman version of my ethical system to attack. Either engage with my actual stated position or don’t engage at all. I’m about a hundred percent done with “well clearly you believe [something I don’t actually believe], so why don’t you follow through on that?!”

“Violence can be justified if it averts serious harm” is not the end-all and be-all of my ethical system. It’s a single facet of a broader axiom that humans should act to minimize others’ suffering. It will not be necessary for me to implement my axiom in that specific way unless I’m actually confronted with a scenario in which I have good reason to expect that committing violence will avert serious harm. (And no, “maybe assassinating a politician will work out in the end” does not qualify.) In any other situation, acting violently would be in direct contradiction to my ethics.

I implement my ethics in my daily life, though I won’t claim to implement them perfectly 100% of the time. I’m not going to cannibalize my entire ideology in service to the single facet that you’ve decided should take priority. I will use violence only when I’m reasonably confident that doing so is necessary to serve my axiom.

But I’m sure it will be much easier for you to debate me if you continue to assume that I’m a robot programmed only with the directive to commit violence for the greater good, with no additional context whatsoever. If that’s what you feel like doing, feel free to just write “my” side of the argument for me from now on.

How’s that pedagogical approach working out for you?

What is the purpose in engaging with your stated position? There’s no value in understanding it better, it hasn’t changed in months, and it’s been repeated ad nauseum.

At this point, these arguments are a better canvas than a useful source of discourse.

You have no means of enforcing either option. I am glad you provided them, but decline both.

“What is the purpose in engaging with your stated position?”

***Whistle blows*** Flag on the field! Quixotic foul. Participant has admitted they have no sincere investment in the discussion and are just using it as a space to monologue and tilt at windmills.

I’ll take that bet. If there was a way that I could save even one life, which required someone taking control of my body and turning me into a literal puppet for five minutes without being able to ask me first, I would be happy with that in the end – assuming I knew what had happened, so I didn’t waste lots of money and stress on neurologists and psychiatrists trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

Yes, if I suddenly found myself getting up, running out the door, and scooping a child from the path of a speeding car, and then someone walked up and said, “Sorry I had to do that, you were the closest, I hope you don’t mind too much,” I’d say “Well it was pretty scary, but I’m glad for how it worked out, thank you for saving that kid.”

Not everyone has a Heinleinesque horror of being temporarily out of control. For myself, I realize just how little control I have over my own mind anyway. (I believe almost everyone has just as little control (Elon Musk may be an exception), but most couldn’t stand to admit it.)

Would I want to be in a society where people could take over my body at any time for any whim? Of course not. Would I want to be in a society where people were willing to suffer some inconvenience and even temporary loss of control in order to make the world a much better place? Where people were willing to be on the negative side of utilitarian bargains, if the positive side were sufficiently positive? Yes, yes I would.

“Systems were the “greater good of the nation” have been prioritized over individual rights and self-determination have had a go in the 20th and got a bad rap since but what do I know, maybe the first try is always messy.”

That’s literally all systems of governance. It’s really just a matter of degree. if you have any system of law enforcement, incarceration, policing, government regulation, taxation, etc., then you live in a system that demands a certain acquiescence of individual rights and self-determination for the good of the nation (usually you included, but not always).

Sure. But the point is that this is the absolute uncrossable line, the principle before all others, in modern democracies. It’s not utter and mindless radical freedom but body autonomy for instance takes priority before anything else when a dilemma occurs.
Contrary to fascism.

Are you attempting to claim that Feral living a life of pure torture for a significant (although no longer constant) portion of her day is the equivalent of Max having his arm twisted?
Scale matters in the real world. When you’re not talking about abstractions, the extent of harm matters.

I don’t think that’s necessarily as cut and dry as you think it is. There are many, many people who would rather die than be tortured for 20-30 hours a week for the rest of their supernaturally long lives. There’s not universal agreement that death is worse than torture, but there is pretty universal agreement that more pain is worse than less pain.

1) Again, if by rational you mean utilitarian, then that depends on how you assign value to *constant torture* and death. Not everyone agrees on the relative values of those.

2) We don’t know her “true motivation.” Not only does this comic not do thought bubbles, but we don’t even have a dialogue/monologue where she puts forth a claim about her true motivation.

3) And from the utilitarian standpoint that you advocate in your first paragraph, if her motivation was the suffering of one person it’d still be legit. Her single friend was going through constant indefinite surgery without anesthetic, and she stopped it by yanking someone’s arm behind their back and depriving them of a few hours of sleep. Like, that’d STILL be understandable even if I granted your assumptions about her motivation.

Of course that’s not what I’m saying. You cannot say two lives are equal because they are different and their value differs based solely on who you ask.
What I’m saying is that Feral volunteered for this (to punish herself or to save lives or whatever), she can quit any time she wants and that the value of Alison’s actions are all centred around Feral’s continued desire to give up pieces of herself to other people.

Probably nothing, since it’d be impractical to force her to continue donating, even if I believe it would be ethical to do so. It would require the sustained cooperation of way too many people, not to mention the difficulty of restraining someone who instantly regenerates from any harm and can’t be sedated.

Only if Feral quit donating immediately after being boosted. If that were the case, it would be unfortunate, but there’s no realistic way Alison could have predicted it at the time she made her decision.

I know! And we can’t trust the person she called because they’ve already demonstrated that their information can’t be trusted. But I doubt it’s going to go there because if it was, there would have been some hints to it and I don’t think there have been. I’m thinking the author wants this to be a purely moral dilemma.

. .Incidentally, I do think it would have made more sense if Alison had acted more slowly than she did.

*Ducks* She was tired and emotionally worn-out, after all, and in no shape to be making an important decision, no matter -how- many lives were on the line. Her going ahead and getting into the situation she did with Max showed a terrifying refusal to acknowledge her -own- limitations. I’m -still- surprised she managed to pull off what she did with as much deftness as she did.

Just . . . I’m sorry. This wasn’t, in my mind, a typical, superhero moment, where the victims were falling out of the airplane, or caught in the burning building, or the bridge is collapsing and all the cars are falling down. Her acting a bit slower . . . would have made more sense, at least in the “this is what I’d have hoped she’d do” way. Alison being Alison, yeah, not much chance.

*sighs, tries to get some sleep herself*

Loranna

I’d like to state once again that all this debate is about a technicality that the text doesn’t even acknowledge. I’m being annoying because the text left it wide open for us to take a step back and say “wait, why didn’t she do this much better thing”, failing to make us believe that there was no alternative (as it is trying to impress on us now)

Although even in a world where Alison’s process was thought through and this was the absolute last resort this would have been the wrong choice for my money of course.

But the “dead people are piling up” argument is an inconsistent and dangerous one and I’mma die on this hill

That the text tells us there were absolutely no alternatives while we all came up with tons of’em. Be it merely take a breath and come back to it with better mental and emotional states. The authors don’t want us to consider that for the real debate that’s actually taking place in the page.

The “she should have thought it through more” argument is almost completely different from the “She did a horrible thing so she could buy her friend a burger” argument. If you want be heard on the first argument, dropping the second would help me hear you.

As I’ve indicated in answers to others this morning, I’m pretty open to discussing whether she should have thought it through more – even at the cost of dozens of lives.

In support of this, the problem Alison now is in with amplifying other bio dynamics. It can be done. It will have other life saving effects. She is not in a situation to do so on terms she can deal with with Max at all.

I . . .am having trouble accepting that. I also, upon reflection, was not rigorous in defining my terms. My apologies: let me rectify that now.

Superhero moments, as I meant the term, are typically the result of a villain, or a natural disaster, putting peoples’ lives in immediate danger. Were it not for the villain, or disaster, those peoples’ lives would not have been imperiled, and without immediate intervention, those lives will be lost. Alsion being a superhero, she’s uniquely gifted to be able to intervene, in ways most people simply can’t, so we look to her to save the day when superhero moments arise.

The situation Alison faced, by contrast, was one where people were suffering and dying of organ failure. Some of those cases may have been the direct cause of a villain, yes – needing a replacement kidney because someone just shanked your last working one would count! But I’d imagine a good portion of those organ failures were due to disease, age, genetic disorders, pollutants . . . in other words, the normal course of events in life. Yes, it’s good to act quickly to save those lives, but this is not, strictly speaking,a case of superhero moments. We don’t look to Alison, or some other superhero, to immediately intervene in the normal course of events in life.

Now, in this particular case, Tara -did- try to intervene, and was doing all she could. She managed to make a superhero solution out of what normally wouldn’t be a superhero moment, but in the end, Tara’s contributions were still part of the everyday course of events. She just managed to make more donor organs available than there had been already, at staggering personal cost.

So, to my reading, Alison’s intervention was not as a superhero, charging into a superhero moment, even if Max’s power allowed for a unique, potentially permanent, solution to organ donor issues. Rather, Alison’s intervention was more akin to . . . charity, I suppose? She made a contribution that would help others do more of the good work they were already doing, in the normal course of events. Specifically, she was contributing to Tara, and to the doctors who were helping the organ donor patients.

Tara was, after all, already working to save peoples’ lives, and had been for some time. She had also accepted the horrific personal cost, doing so over the objections of her friends out of the strength of her convictions. Yes, freeing Tara from that suffering was a good thing; I’m glad it happened! But, it was still a suffering that Tara willingly embraced, was capable of handling, and was handling. Tara didn’t -need- Alison to save her from immediate harm.

Nor did Tara need Alison to save lives for her. Tara was -already- saving lives through her sacrifice. True, not as many as Alison’s intervention allowed, but she -was- saving lives, going above and beyond what any reasonable person could ever ask of another. And she went into this effort fully believing, and accepting, that she couldn’t save everyone, and -it was okay that she couldn’t-, because the lives she could save still mattered. And those she couldn’t . . . she regretted deeply, I’m sure. As did, I’m also sure, the doctors who were also trying to save those peoples’ lives.

Ahh, I hope I managed to get my point across, without too much rambling. Dangit Stephanie, you got me back into talking about the issues, rather than the artwork! You know i wouldn’t do that for just anyone, right? ^_^

(Okay; ∫Clémens×ds 🐙did too, I can’t help it; I love you guys too much.)

Loranna

Tests this wild and crazy magic-speak . . .

Huh; much obliged ^_^

As for the matter of perspective brought up by cphoenix, and your own points, I’ll try to make a more reasoned response sometime later. I’ve been turning over the question of how far should one go to save the nominally un-savable for a while now! But lunch is calling, quite stridently in fact, so I’ll just throw this out for now:

I’m finding myself in agreement with other posters above, who have pointed out the potential costs of Alison’s decision – Max is very likely to take steps to never be coerced into amping someone again, which could have profound effects down the line. It may very well be, that saving these countless lives now, and Tara as well, was worth sacrificing those potential future benefits, and accepting whatever potential evil Max might wreck in retaliation. I still think saving Tara as a good idea, and that, in Alison’ shoes, I’d have probably done much the same, eventually.

I just really, really wish Alison had shown some indication that she’d even considered any of these potential consequences before she went for her One Punch Solution. And I’m really, really worried that she won’t see that the issue here is not just what she did, but how little thought went into getting there.

Anyway! Time to eat. Talk later all.

Loranna

Superheroes save people from burning buildings, dam collapses, etc. I agree with Stephanie – it doesn’t take a villain.

What it does take, in the genre, is an identifiable victim. A superhero who writes a check to Heifer International is not “being a superhero.” Again, no sarcasm.

Since the dying people are off-screen, you are right that it wasn’t a “superhero moment.” But whether it is or not… only makes a difference to the viewers. I think this discussion makes more sense if we ignore the viewers’ perspective.

♥

As Walter pointed out, Alison may have spoiled a much greater opportunity by doing what she did. So it may have been unwise, and the unwisdom may have come from tiredness, and perhaps she should have said, “The stakes are so high that I’ll sleep, knowing that 100 people will die while I’m sleeping, so I can make a better decision.” If that sounds like sarcasm, it’s not – I’m being serious.

What I have a problem with is the argument that it was _morally indefensible_ for Alison to do what she did. And I have an extra problem with people pretending she did it so she could give Feral a hamburger.

If someone argues that it was the wrong decision on practical grounds, they have no need to duck – from me, anyway. Being utilitarian means you have to do what you can to make the right decision, and that definitely means considering all the costs.

It’s quite possible that she should have sent in e.g. Paladin with a calmer, stronger, more attractive (to Max) argument for why Max should augment both her and Feral, or even join the team. That might well have done more good in the long run.

I’m going to miss Bob, but waiting for Allison to tell Max off was well worth it.

Don’t believe that. The means are sometimes justified by the end, but it’s never always. If you’re so dedicated to ANY philosophy that you can’t see the reality around you, that’s bad. We’re often forced to choose between different degrees of “not okay.”

A fool or a weakling, jeez. Fascism’s hot these days, isn’t it?
I would also like to kindly ask you to not equate the same kind of value judgement you make when you boil down a person to “a fool” and when you boil them down to “a sociopath”. The mental illness does not exist for people to establish points with.

…are you arguing that it’s offensive to use “fascist” as an insult?
Because woaw

Mental illness exists whether you like it or not. I will stick to facts, and if you don’t like the facts, you are welcome to stop reading.

Also, I would like to ask you kindly to stop reading things into my writing that I did not say. I did not say that a fool and a sociopath were equivalent. I also did not say that my, or anyone’s, value judgement is or should be the same.

What I said is that reasons for failing to act quickly might be foolishness, weakness, or sociopathy. Feel free to disagree on factual grounds, if you can. But if you try to distract by pretending I have broken some rule of propriety, I will reject your request as being doubly unfounded.

So keeping the moral high ground of pretending to want to do things right is worth the necessarily dead people it leads to, but not actually wanting to do things right?
This moral high ground is very slippery indeed

Not devolving into the violent rule of the powerful as soon as the first hurdle inevitably posed by the sanctity of body autonomy arises *also* fosters cooperation. I’d argue: way, way, way better.

Well she botched that up.
Now the people who died of organ failure while Alison was sitting on his couch instead of going for the head right away died for nothing

The option Gurwara gave her wasn’t to go back and do it over, it was to undo what she’d done to Max and simultaneously undo what she did for Feral/the transplant recipients. Alison hasn’t actually rejected the idea of going back and trying new dialogue options with Max, because that hypothetical wasn’t presented to her.