Actually, assuming that the people in the family are relatively normal and want to live and want each other to live, and assuming that they don't know about your plans before you start enacting them, I'd expect the suffering to be significantly higher in situation A, since the family members experience more time mourning and probably considerable time worrying about being murdered.
I'm not actually sure how these scenarios are relevant, though.
Exactly my point. [mixed up a) and b) in the last question].
A bad thing about a person's death is the negative externality imposed on those who mourn them dying.
So to equate someone not wanting to kill their child [the equivalent of scenario a), killing a person with people around to mourn them] with someone deciding that the human race, as a whole, deserves to die [which is the equivalent of scenario b)], or to say that this person is a hypocrite, is totally idiotic.
If in the original essay it said it would be hypocritical of someone to say that the human race deserves to die while being unwilling to push the button which instantly ended all human life, then it would make sense.
Why the downvotes on the original reply? Are people so thin-skinned that they can't take their arguments being called stupid, or are they so ignorant that they bury an argument they don't agree with?
Please, explain how the human race could fail to survive without each of its members dying.
I never said that, nor implied it. You're completely misinterpreting what I said.
Consider the difference between these two scenarios:
a) There's a family of 10 people, who I normatively have decided do not deserve to live. I, over the course of the next 40 years, kill them person by person, using an instant and physically painless method, one by one, one ever 4 years.
b) There's a family of 10 people who I normatively have decided do not deserve to live. I wait 40 years, and kill them all at once, using an instant and physically painless method.
Answer me this: are they the same thing?
The same end result, yes, but not the same process, and the amount of suffering in process a) is far greater, would you agree?
"Well, maybe the human species doesn't deserve to survive."
does not imply or approximate
"I want to end the human race person by person."
and your implication that it does is incredibly stupid.
What would you think of Brits who could have their electrodes removed, but preferred to leave them in?
Personally, it would reduce my interest in being careful with salmon pictures.
Precisely.
To say religion is not a choice would be to imply someone is being forced into it against their will. If it is against their will, surely their offence over blasphemy is insincere?
By the same line of argument that we shouldn't slander one particular long-dead paedophile warlord because he has a legion of sycophants at his metaphorical feet, we shouldn't slander a large number of other people who have a similar following and will take the same offence. So when someone says something not-so-nice about Nick Griffin, or draws a funny cartoon of him, is it not just as bad?
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No, glutamate. Your original comment was rude and uninteresting. "Stupid" isn't an informative criticism (not even if you specify that the stupidity is "incredible"), and it signals contempt and disrespect besides. Uninformative criticisms that signal that attitude are not readily welcomed here.
You could have said - if I interpret your view correctly, which I may or may not - something like:
The vocabulary someone uses in an attack on an argument shouldn't be limited by the degree to which the language might offend someone. Or should it?
To be explicit: I am not calling him stupid! Only someone intelligent could write an article like this, that's obvious, and I agree with the rest of it.
And yes, that's a superior phrasing of my argument. I should have been more descriptive in the original post, that's my fault. Do you agree with it?