PsYcHo wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am
Judging morality based on percentages doesn't guarantee
actual morality.
No, but most "conspiracy theories" are about things most people would consider bad, which makes them unlikely in themselves to be true.
Now things like NSA spying where there's a split, many people considering it good, it starts to become more plausible because the people who consider it good are less likely to have crises of conscience and blab about it. Until you get a Snowden in the mix. The longer it goes on and the more people involved, Snowdens become inevitable. The more socially acceptable the practice is, though, the longer you have before you get a Snowden.
For example, let's say there was this drug that most people think cures cancer, and the FDA didn't approve it (probably because it actually does not).
It would be easy to conspire to smuggle the drug into the country and get it to cancer patients. You could have hundreds of people in on that, because it's widely believed to be a good thing, and you might not get caught in a decade since your potential Snowdens are one in a million.
When a "conspiracy" is to do something widely regarded as good, you can really push the limits of what you can get away with.
PsYcHo wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am
One of the largest issues involving conspiracies, is deciding when something is actually a conspiracy.
Definitely, but the main questions are the size it needs to be and the nefariousness. "Conspiracy" has negative connotations, and one of grand scope.
A half a dozen people plotting in secret to do something good (like surprise somebody with a special birthday gift) is almost universally successful.
As many people plotting a terrorist attack is almost universally unsuccessful. People have crises of faith and conscience, they talk to friends and family about it, and from there it leaks and the whole thing unravels and they get caught. It's important to remember that it's information from Muslims that foils most Islamic terror attacks.
PsYcHo wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am
That's akin to determining how many students cheated on a test, based only upon those who were caught cheating.
Those are conspiracies too, but they're very small ones.
I consider more mathematical probability and human psychology.
A class-wide conspiracy to cheat would be very unlikely unless all of the students regarded it as the right thing to do, which rarely happens (sometimes teachers are unfair. which could cause this).
PsYcHo wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am
At what point is it too far for a government to attempt to achieve a "greater good"? And the examples I linked all did lead to advanced understanding of certain key issues.
Good question. I think this research probably was for the greater good, as most research is since it broadens human knowledge. BUT when a government is doing it, we want to know it's not crossing lines and violating civil rights. Not because what they did this time was bad, but because it's a bad precedent that a bad president might use to do something genuinely evil.
So, we have to consider the probability of this power to violate civil rights being used for evil in the future. Because of that, we should be against it... but it doesn't mean it was wrong.
Kind of like if you murdered somebody you knew for sure (you had evidence/you've seen him do it, but it was inadmissible) to be a child molester and killer. Every night this guy is killing, but the police can't prove it or keep him in jail.
If you did that, it would be genuinely good... but you'd still have to go to jail even if you were right. We can't have people murdering other people based on their own private knowledge. Courts exist for a reason.
So, it would be right for you to murder that monster. BUT it would also be right for you to go to jail for it.
It's one of those situations.
PsYcHo wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am
But even if the experiments done in the name of bettering human existence are considered worthy, they tend to prolong and exponentially increase human life. And there shouldn't be a doubt that more humans = more suffering for all sentient creatures.
That may be the case now, but increasing the body of human knowledge also helps us become better people. I don't think this will always be the case. To the contrary, in the grand scheme of things humans are the best shot at reducing suffering in the universe that we know of. We could soon eliminate disease and parasites for wild animals, feed carnivores cultured meat, put microchips in animals so we can know when they're sick or hurt and send a team of vets to help them. Who knows... there's a lot of suffering that has and will go on without humans. We can make the world better for others beyond our species if we're up for it... once we clean house and stop causing it.