= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
LauraABJ comments on Morality and International Humanitarian Law - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (100)
I would also note that while you've given evidence that breaking international rules regarding killing civilians can be useful, the question is whether or not the benefits outweigh the costs. How much shorter will the war be if you kill all the farmers? How many fewer men will die in total because you nuked that city? How much less will future generations value human life because rape and torture are considered acceptable means to an end?
My knee-jerk reaction is that having these standards may indeed reduce overall casualties and that they are important for international image and future cooperation. I am open to evidence to the contrary though.
If you happen to be the weaker side then potentially quite a lot longer.
I think that's the argument that by default requires proof, not the other way around. Intuitively, having external independent standards can only prevent me from best accomplishing my goal, whatever my goal may be. If my goal is to kill while also killing few civilians, I'll go for that, but I'll do it more efficiently in most cases than if I have to follow laws I don't believe in.
I would say the opposite, out of conservatism, but I don't expect to be able to argue the point as anything more than headbutting intuitions.
True of normative reasoners, not of humans. See Ethical Inhibitions.
I absolutely agree with you if my own actions are the only ones I am taking into account, however I expect that the actions of others will better align with my goals if the standards are in place.
Given the high cost of implementing these standards, some level of proof (or at least a calculation of expected future utility) should be given as justification for their existence. I can think of two ways of examining this:
1) Compare the casualties (or other desired metrics) of similar conflicts before and after the implementation of standards and in situations in which standards were adhered to or ignored.
2) Try to quantify metrics of interest in a hypothetical war with or without adherence to the standards. This of course is very difficult, but I'm not willing to say impossible.
(1) doesn't really help us predict the effect of proposed new standards that have never been tried before, and that's what we really want to do. I hope we can find a way to achieve (2) :-)