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Worm Morality Debate Thread

Blake Hannon said:
Well no, his passions are wrong because his brain has been damaged by an outside force.
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You actually haven't solved the problem. This is what one might call the naturalistic fallacy. "Damage" is a value judgement you attach. His brain has been altered from the human baseline. So what? If my brain was altered and I got perfect memory you wouldn't make the claim that I was "damaged". My brain is altered daily by outside forces. God knows how the chemicals and actions coming from other bodies have affected and changed me. What made me love this person? Their pheromones or a precise chain of events?

Essentially you're going:"I have certain base emotions, my base emotions are the measure of all things, those who don't share my base emotions are thus damaged and thus are not thinking correctly" when, in fact, your baseline emotions are also just the result of similar physical phenomena and the values you attach are a result of said emotions.

It's all "outside forces" man.

Hence, privileging your own passions that are just as much a result of processes beyond your control. Exactly as I said.

But apparently you're a person who thinks brainwashing is totes fine as long as society benefits, so I'm not sure we will ever be able to agree on any moral question
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It's a challenge to his position and one he should consider. I'm not for brainwashing but I've not been satisfied on this point so it should be explored (if it turns out that I can't ever be satisfied then...well, brainwashing it is) .

You seem to find it difficult to deal with arguments that in some way trigger your moral intuitions. This is the second time this has happened, to my knowledge.

Perhaps you should consider that we're not all the same way. Or perhaps you should kinda not be surprised.
 
Reveen said:
What is a "healthy" Regent? Because from what I see the Regent we see in the story is Regent. What you see is who he is. Sociopathy is not some mind controlling brain worm or Dark Side corruption. It's a personality disorder. And considering he's so much easier to deal with than somebody like the Joker there's not exactly an urgency to make him :turian:"right".:turian:

Besides, Panacea was raised by the superhero equivalent of hardcore bible thumpers and her self control hangs by a thread. I don't exactly trust her judgement on who will and who will not need behaviour modification. That would probably put anyone even a little removed from her narrow upper-middle class purview at risk.
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Get with the damn program, Pancea in THIS scenario does NOT have "her self-control hanging by a thread" and has likely PERFECT judgement on who "will or will not need behaviour modification". Stop acting like this is the damn trolley problem and talking about crap like "I take a third option and save BOTH because muh superior intellect lets me break the scenario while missing the point of it" the only question here is whether it is MORAL to impinge on Regents free-will by removing his brain damage by force NOT whether "Panacea and her family are the equivalent of hardcore bible-thumpers so they're obviously no trustworthy"
FUCK if you're so hung up on this we can use SCAPEGOAT or OTHALA or any fucking healer that can fix brains perfectly and knows exactly what to do perfectly give him back full human empathy and emotions (like guilt and remorse and knowing how fucked up what he did to Sophia was).
 
As I've been all in favor of adding grist recently, allow me to add a parallel.

I work as an interpreter for the Deaf, and a question that comes up frequently is: How do you feel about cochlear implants?

For those who don't know, cochlear implants are devices implanted on the (surprise!) cochlea, a structure inside of the ear that interpreters pressure changes into signals for the brain to interpret as hearing. The device itself hooks up to a receiver on the outside of the skull through magnets and short range transmission of radio(?) waves, which fits over the ear like a conventional hearing aid.

The devices are often touted as a perfect solution to deafness and are suggested to Deaf people of every stripe in audiological offices (where I often find work, since I am an interpreter for medical settings as well as others)

Ignoring the fact that the devices do not have a 100% success rate, and are not equivalent to 'normal' hearing, I often get confused looks when I say that I am not usually in favor of their use.

I get especially confused looks when I inform those people that a strong majority of Deaf people don't even want them and would be offended by the suggestion that they somehow need to be fixed.

So what I'm bringing up is a ethic of normalization and the use of technology to enforce a desired or privileged class of people. If I am biologically, neurologically, or psychologically different from some approximated 'norm' that has been established through data sampling, am I obligated to find technology or medication to bring me in line with that norm, even if it is not my desire to do so?

If I do not desire to do so, does society have the right to force me to do so?
 
Cunuroi said:
You seem to find it difficult to deal with arguments that in some way trigger your moral intuitions. This is the second time this has happened, to my knowledge.

Perhaps you should consider that we're not all the same way. Or perhaps you should kinda not be surprised.
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If you had advocated slavery, genocide, rape, ethnic cleansing, or absolutely anything else, and I was disgusted by it, you could use that exact same argument to say that my disgust was illegitimate. By those standards, morality is irrelevant no matter what, in which case I'm not sure why you're in this thread.
 
Plus, in giving a person that power we're trusting their judgement on what is 'right thinking' and not, and moreover even if they are responsive to the laws and norms of society, we are thus trusting society. Fifty years ago, in the scenario you outlined, Panacea would be tasked with 'Mind-fucking the gay away' since if she can make someone gay by fucking with their brain (as she does) than she can surely "Cure" the "Evil Disease" of homosexuality, and 50-60 years ago a very large portion of the United States would have been just fine with that.

Now, you can argue that sociopathy is a special case, and indeed I don't think there's going to be a sudden turn-around in which people think "Sociopathy is acceptable and good behavior" but if you're empowering someone to punish deviation from societal norms, you have to think of what that would actually entail.

And, convincing someone via logic is not the same as doing it via force. Success has nothing to do with it. If I try to convince you to change your mind on, say, thinking that murdering people is great (to use an extreme example, one which doesn't fit Regent) then I am not violating your will, I'm merely convincing you to change your mind.

Choice, not force.

Unless you're one of those 1980s Evolutionary Psychologists who thinks that the brain, all actions, and everything else is so completely hardwired that neither social (nurture, in other words, effects) nor individual free will is possible. In which case you've missed quite a few decades of science and are behind the times.
 
Blake Hannon said:
If you had advocated slavery, genocide, rape, ethnic cleansing, or absolutely anything else, and I was disgusted by it, you could use that exact same argument to say that my disgust was illegitimate. By those standards, morality is irrelevant no matter what, in which case I'm not sure why you're in this thread.
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Your disgust isn't the main issue. The argument is.

It's more like "if you advocate the banning of certain actions based on a certain understanding of the mind and causality then that understanding of the mind and causality should be defensible". It's like saying that I don't believe in morality because I reject Divine Command theory.

If determinism made morality self-evidently irrelevant then the majority of philosophers wouldn't both be moral realists and compatibilists.

As for why I would be in a morality thread, perhaps certain assumptions about what is right are of interest to me, or the defense of those assumptions is.It should be clear since I think I argued against things on both sides.

That's possible. Even if I was an anti-realist (and I'm clearly not, if you look at the earlier posts) they still could be.

EDIT: Look at the example involving the Deaf community. If you don't know where the line is for a justification for moral action then you can't say where they fall and so on.
 
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Honestly, I don't think that Regent needs fixing. Sure, he is a sociopath who likes to do stuff for shits and giggles, but he was developing into a high functioning one. He might not understand empathy, but he gets that he has to be loyal, to protect people he cares about, that his dad is a total asshole, he will fight for the greater good, he is smart enough to listen to people he knows are not as fucked in the head as he is and in the end he did choose to sacrifice himself for the person he loved.

To me, that's not someone that is necessarily going to be a menace to society, or needs fixing. Now, does he have potential to turn up very fucking bad? For sure, in the wrong circumstances and having a really few bad days and things happen to him he could turn out to be a terrifying man. But I don't think that risk is necessarily that different from the risk that normal people who goes through that kind of shit would have. Anyone with Regent's powers could turn really bad in the right context, and a lot of people who do not have Regent's issues could do a lot more terrible shit, a lot more frequently that he did.

As his relationship with Aisha and the Undersiders showed, he doesn't need a brainwashing or a brain fixing, he like all people with mental issues, needs friends and people he loves and he cares about who support him and he supports them in return.
 
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Part of the matter seems to be the idea that forcing Regent to experience guilt and remorse is a good outcome in of itself. Why? Guilt and remorse exist to prevent us from doing certain behaviours, not for their own sake. And since Regent is captured, he's unlikely to be doing any fucked up shit in the near future. All forcing him to feel guilt will do is make him suffer just for the sake of the idea that said suffering is inherently noble.

And that's kind of psychotic, if you ask me.

1986ctcel said:
Get with the damn program, Pancea in THIS scenario does NOT have "her self-control hanging by a thread" and has likely PERFECT judgement on who "will or will not need behaviour modification". Stop acting like this is the damn trolley problem and talking about crap like "I take a third option and save BOTH because muh superior intellect lets me break the scenario while missing the point of it" the only question here is whether it is MORAL to impinge on Regents free-will by removing his brain damage by force NOT whether "Panacea and her family are the equivalent of hardcore bible-thumpers so they're obviously no trustworthy"
FUCK if you're so hung up on this we can use SCAPEGOAT or OTHALA or any fucking healer that can fix brains perfectly and knows exactly what to do perfectly give him back full human empathy and emotions (like guilt and remorse and knowing how fucked up what he did to Sophia was).
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Dude, if the question is simply "is it moral to alter Regent's mind" then why are we talking specifically about Panacea? She was brought up, so I assume that the question is being asked in context of her personality and beliefs. If we're supposed to be talking about the issue outside of the context of Worm than why are we discussing it with Worm characters in the first place?

Unless you're screwing with me, I can hardly tell these days!

landcollector said:
New Wave is Hardcore Bible Thumper equivalents? I thought that was Haven...
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I've been reconsidering Amy's issues with her family as kind of an allegory for a closeted gay kid living with an intensely religious family. Just replace "gay" with "her father was a super villain and this makes her bad somehow" and Leviticus with the first Superman movie.
 
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Reveen said:
Part of the matter seems to be the idea that forcing Regent to experience guilt and remorse is a good outcome in of itself. Why? Guilt and remorse exist to prevent us from doing certain behaviours, not for their own sake. And since Regent is captured, he's unlikely to be doing any fucked up shit in the near future. All forcing him to feel guilt will do is make him suffer just for the sake of the idea that said suffering would be inherently noble.
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Well, if you "fix" him you might be able to release and rehabilitate him.

How is a lifetime in prison better?
 
Reveen said:
Dude, if the question is simply "is it moral to alter Regent's mind" then why are we talking specifically about Panacea? She was brought up, so I assume that the question is being asked in context of her personality and beliefs. If we're supposed to be talking about the issue outside of the context of Worm than why are we discussing it with Worm characters in the first place?

Unless you're screwing with me, I can hardly tell these days!
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For god's sake its basically just the trolley problem only using Worm and its characters as a framing device, it doesn't matter if its panacea or regent or whoever they're just there to dress it up.
 
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Why don't we move the example to someone easier to discuss. Same example, but with someone who it is easier to argue is actively doing wrong constantly. Let's say Jack Slash gets captured, and right before he gets sent to the Birdcage, Panacea gets to...same deal.

And @Cunuroi , so if we had the means, would you advocate 'fixing' all (convicted) criminals, or something, of their criminal behaviors and thoughts? I mean, I'm honestly just curious at this point where the line between acceptable and unacceptable would stand.

Edit: And there I think it'd be individual choice, for the Deaf person. If the Deaf person wishes to hear I think all available resources should be expended to let them. If they say "No thanks" I don't believe in tying them down and forcing them to hear, and I doubt very many people do.
 
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Thrice.Great said:
I don't quite follow this, would you be willing to elaborate?
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If you say that we should "fix" any damaged people then where does the Deaf community fall? You need to have a theory that can stand up to challenges otherwise it's just an oversimplification that helps no one.

So, when someone asks you, "what about the Deaf or sociopaths or transhumanists,what about your theory possibly failing here or there?What the fuck does damaged mean anyway?" it's not a meaningless objection because the response has a clear impact on how you apply your moral theory
 
The Laurent said:
And @Cunuroi , so if we had the means, would you advocate 'fixing' all (convicted) criminals, or something, of their criminal behaviors and thoughts? I mean, I'm honestly just curious at this point where the line between acceptable and unacceptable would stand.

Edit: And there I think it'd be individual choice, for the Deaf person. If the Deaf person wishes to hear I think all available resources should be expended to let them. If they say "No thanks" I don't believe in tying them down and forcing them to hear, and I doubt very many people do.
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I've honestly been troubled by this for a while, it's driving me to compatibilism. The usual argument is that it's all just causes and that our attempts to classify them are simply a result of incomplete information. This of course leads to the edge of nihilism so you can see why it's unattractive. Why would you not drug parents and force them to love their kids and be good? After all, if it's just causes you might as well wipe away the desire to gamble away the mortgage or fuck the maid.

Under this measure there's no line.

If I had to think of a measure that wasn't nihilistic....I'd say that they'd have to have such a divergent mental state that clearly negatively affected themselves or those around them enough that we can say that they cannot rationally make the decision to abstain and we cannot justly accommodate (i.e. let them have some fun) them. So someone who can't stop raping people or believes that the voices telling him to carve the Bible unto cats come from God. Or someone who wants the treatment and can prove a constant negative in their life, e.g. sociopaths that have huge recidivism rates.

Deaf people aren't hurting people and we should justly be accomodating them (unlike the cat-killer) so they would fall outside.

But, honestly, even this feels unsatisfying,artificial.
 
Cunuroi said:
I've honestly been troubled by this for a while, it's driving me to compatibilism. The usual argument is that it's all just causes and that our attempts to classify them are simply a result of incomplete information. This of course leads to the edge of nihilism so you can see why it's unattractive. Why would you not drug parents and force them to love their kids and be good? After all, if it's just causes you might as well wipe away the desire to gamble away the mortgage or fuck the maid.

Under this measure there's no line.

If I had to think of a measure that wasn't nihilistic....I'd say that they'd have to have such a divergent mental state that clearly negatively affected themselves or those around them enough that we can say that they cannot rationally make the decision to abstain and we cannot justly accommodate (i.e. let them have some fun) them. So someone who can't stop raping people or believes that the voices telling him to carve the Bible unto cats come from God. Or someone who wants the treatment and can prove a constant negative in their life, e.g. sociopaths that have huge recidivism rates.

Deaf people aren't hurting people and we should justly be accomodating them (unlike the cat-killer) so they would fall outside.

But, honestly, even this feels unsatisfying,artificial.
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The other problem with the measure is that people and societies can and have subscribed harm to actions we would not think harmful. At one point in time, homosexuality, blasphemy, 'loose (sexual) behavior' and so on were thought to be genuine threats to society and how it functions, to be punished in every way society can manage, up to and including legal action or commitment to asylums or 'treatment programs.'

So, like, if we had some theoretical Panacea-device, what would keep a bigot from, say, deciding that 'not believing in God' is a mental illness and 'curing' everyone of it. Ultimately it seems too much power in any individual's, or even any society's, hands. And if we had a Panacea Machine, it would seem more reasonable to limit to to physically curing people of purely physical ailments.
 
The Laurent said:
If they say "No thanks" I don't believe in tying them down and forcing them to hear, and I doubt very many people do.
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Ah, well there's my major problem. You see, most implantation surgery occurs when kids are under the age of three. Now, there is a quality of life issue for Deaf kids born to Hearing parents (mostly because a lot of parents with Deaf kids are utterly fucking stupid about not being neglectful, but whatever that's my personal bias), but the fact remains that the kids are not providing consent and the surgery is not life saving. I know plenty of Deaf kids whose parents are not Deaf and they (obviously) can acquire language. One kid I interpreted for had been accepted to every single Ivy League University (seriously, all of them) despite being Deaf, never having been implanted, and not ever taking speech therapy.

But now we're getting off on a tangent.

The point is simply (in my eyes) that Regent does not need to be fixed as a person. He can spend the rest of life in prison because he broke laws, but he does not need to have his personality reworked just so he can feel grief over it. As Reveen pointed out, that would be more for the public to feel better over his remorse than it would be for Regent's benefit.

Actually, I could imagine a kind of cool Flowers for Algernon kind of story featuring Regent getting his Sociopathy Amy'd away, having a period of internal discovery before realizing that he'd rather be a sociopath just so he didn't have to feel crippling guilt and remorse all the time for actions he performed as a different person.

Actually, that kind of vaguely reminds me of Angel from Buffy.
 
Thrice.Great said:
Ah, well there's my major problem. You see, most implantation surgery occurs when kids are under the age of three. Now, there is a quality of life issue for Deaf kids born to Hearing parents (mostly because a lot of parents with Deaf kids are utterly fucking stupid about not being neglectful, but whatever that's my personal bias), but the fact remains that the kids are not providing consent and the surgery is not life saving. I know plenty of Deaf kids whose parents are not Deaf and they (obviously) can acquire language. One kid I interpreted for had been accepted to every single Ivy League University (seriously, all of them) despite being Deaf, never having been implanted, and not ever taking speech therapy.

But now we're getting off on a tangent.

The point is simply (in my eyes) that Regent does not need to be fixed as a person. He can spend the rest of life in prison because he broke laws, but he does not need to have his personality reworked just so he can feel grief over it. As Reveen pointed out, that would be more for the public to feel better over his remorse than it would be for Regent's benefit.
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So someone with a serious mental/personality disorder should just rot in prison instead of just trying to rehabilitate them? Even if its only remanding them to a psychiatric facility. Rehabilitation is FAR better and more preferable to retribution.
 
The Laurent said:
The other problem with the measure is that people and societies can and have subscribed harm to actions we would not think harmful. At one point in time, homosexuality, blasphemy, 'loose (sexual) behavior' and so on were thought to be genuine threats to society and how it functions, to be punished in every way society can manage, up to and including legal action or commitment to asylums or 'treatment programs.'

So, like, if we had some theoretical Panacea-device, what would keep a bigot from, say, deciding that 'not believing in God' is a mental illness and 'curing' everyone of it. Ultimately it seems too much power in any individual's, or even any society's, hands. And if we had a Panacea Machine, it would seem more reasonable to limit to to physically curing people of purely physical ailments.
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The main reason that this sort of transhumanism is actually terrifying, no matter what people tell you about superHD eyesight. I've heard it described as a semantic apocalypse.

Of course, this strikes me akin to claiming that the Enlightenment didn't happen and that we should proceed as if God's not dead and whatever he said is Right. If it can be done then we're likely wrong about what we're protecting in the first place.

It's all fucked.
Thrice.Great said:
The point is simply (in my eyes) that Regent does not need to be fixed as a person. He can spend the rest of life in prison because he broke laws, but he does not need to have his personality reworked just so he can feel grief over it. As Reveen pointed out, that would be more for the public to feel better over his remorse than it would be for Regent's benefit..
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And...if we also caught a Regent Echidna-clone we wouldn't fix them either? Someone Heartbreaker'd? Someone Simurghed?

But I think you're ignoring part of the argument being made. It's not just that he should suffer for suffering's sake but to be better and free.
 
1986ctcel said:
So someone with a serious mental/personality disorder should just rot in prison instead of just trying to rehabilitate them? Even if its only remanding them to a psychiatric facility. Rehabilitation is FAR better and more preferable to retribution.
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Though the phrase 'rot in prison' actually brings up real concerns. Because of cut funding and a lack of resources, prisons are becoming the dumping grounds for people with serious mental illness.

But all of this depends on the scenario. Like, let's just take Panacea. She has to sleep, she has to eat. She has needs to be met, and so her time is limited.

So the question is, is her time better spent curing inoperable diseases and healing Heroes who got hurt battling giant Kaijuu, or is it better spent going around and fixing people with mental illnesses, or what combination of those two works best?

Because every minute she spends eating dinner, or breathing, or curing Regent's sociopathy (assuming this is a 'good' action for the sake of argument) is a moment not spent helping someone else in another way.
 
1986ctcel said:
So someone with a serious mental/personality disorder should just rot in prison instead of just trying to rehabilitate them? Even if its only remanding them to a psychiatric facility. Rehabilitation is FAR better and more preferable to retribution.
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Is Sociopathy something that can be rehabilitated?

Cunuroi said:
but to be better
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This is the thing i have trouble with. Maybe I was hasty to say he should or shouldn't be Amy'd, but it's extremely problematic to assume one state is better than another, especially if the person involved has no desire to change. If we can't trust someone's ability to self-determine the kind of life they want then where do we stop?
 
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Thrice.Great said:
This is the thing i have trouble with. Maybe I was hasty to say he should or shouldn't be Amy'd, but it's extremely problematic to assume one state is better than another, especially if the person involved has no desire to change. If we can't trust someone's ability to self-determine the kind of life they want then where do we stop?
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This is literally all morality is. It's problematic to get right in practice but if we couldn't do it morality would just be nonsense.

Or do you feel that you can't say I'm wrong if I dump a million people across the world into depressive fugues? Or do you complain when we force someone to see a psychiatrist if they try to commit suicide? After all, why should I tell them that their state is not inherently equal to mine? After all, we are clearly not trusting them to self-determine.
1986ctcel said:
When its caused by your dad giving you brain damage and killing your ability to feel things (and is apparently slowly getting cured if Cherish's "more emotional" remark meant anything) then yes I suppose it can be.
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What you mean to say is: yes. Because giant crystal aliens.

Amy can make her sister love her. She could probably push it if she wanted to. Combined with a functioning prison sentence and some conditioning it probably doesn't matter if your dad fucked you up through space magic or if you're just like one of those kids that joins gangs or armies.
 
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