this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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Oh noes ethical dilemmas are hard! Can we please not have to think about them anymore?
The point isn't to tell you how to think, the point is to make you think. If you're upset by someone making you think, that's on you, not on a field of study.
My favorite dilemma is the one where you have a time machine but you can't kill Hitler, but you can steal Hitler's wallet. All the bad things will still happen, all you will accomplish is Hitler will have one bad night. So is it ethical to steal Hitler's wallet? The ethical answer is no, because there's no positive benefit to it. But as one ethicist said "Yeah but I'd still do it because it's Hitler, fuck that guy."
You don't always have to do the ethical thing but it's useful to know the ethical answer so you understand when you're doing something with non-ethical motives. Sometimes you're just doing stuff to make yourself happy and that's fine.