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http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2275

Too bad making the war bigger tends to increase both K and X directly proportionally, otherwise this proof might only be 99% insane.

This makes no sense... 99 people can't kill 1 person. Eventually, one person will be the actual "killer", even if 99 people stab a single person simultaneously there will be one knife which actually struck the "killing" blow (even if we're incapable of ever determining which knife). So in any killing scenario, 50% of the people involved will be victims...

PhiloxSophia wrote:This makes no sense... 99 people can't kill 1 person. Eventually, one person will be the actual "killer", even if 99 people stab a single person simultaneously there will be one knife which actually struck the "killing" blow (even if we're incapable of ever determining which knife). So in any killing scenario, 50% of the people involved will be victims...

I don't think the person is going to survive if the "killing blow" didn't strike.

The statement "for sufficiently large x, murder is a victimless crime" is inaccurate. That's not how limits work! This bothered me enough to make a forum post about it.

DonRetrasado wrote:

PhiloxSophia wrote:This makes no sense... 99 people can't kill 1 person. Eventually, one person will be the actual "killer", even if 99 people stab a single person simultaneously there will be one knife which actually struck the "killing" blow (even if we're incapable of ever determining which knife). So in any killing scenario, 50% of the people involved will be victims...

I don't think the person is going to survive if the "killing blow" didn't strike.

Exactly. The death is overdetermined. You could even have 99 blows that would each be fatal individually.

Shub wrote:The statement "for sufficiently large x, murder is a victimless crime" is inaccurate. That's not how limits work! This bothered me enough to make a forum post about it.

Zach is trolling you. You haven't noticed the previous hundred times that he tends to do this to the overly anal?

'For sufficiently large X, murder is a victimless crime' is false, but,

'The bigger we make a war, the more ethical it becomes' is true provided that the increase of people involved is of the set declaring the war, ethical defined as 'being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice'. An increase of people agreeing to the war is an increase of people that admit to the war being in accordance to standards for right conduct or practice.

Jonfon wrote:'For sufficiently large X, murder is a victimless crime' is false, but,

'The bigger we make a war, the more ethical it becomes' is true provided that the increase of people involved is of the set declaring the war, ethical defined as 'being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice'. An increase of people agreeing to the war is an increase of people that admit to the war being in accordance to standards for right conduct or practice.

this assumes that "right" == majority opinion

Edminster wrote:

Jonfon wrote:'For sufficiently large X, murder is a victimless crime' is false, but,

'The bigger we make a war, the more ethical it becomes' is true provided that the increase of people involved is of the set declaring the war, ethical defined as 'being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice'. An increase of people agreeing to the war is an increase of people that admit to the war being in accordance to standards for right conduct or practice.

this assumes that "right" == majority opinion

No, this assumes plural compliance to rules or standards for right conduct or practice regarding that event. For each person agreeing to the war in place, one stance of accordance to the standard of war being right conduct or practice. 100,000 people actively taking part in the war, 100,000 accordances to rules or standards for right conduct or practice. 100,000 > 90,000 > 1, thus the more rightfully agreed the more ethical (ethical as defined). This doesn't assume what's right is defined by majority, this assumes what's right is defined by each moral agent (there are as many views on what is right as there are moral agents).

This comic wasn't funny. It was sad.

Did somebody forget to make a jokey-wokey?

Funny -- this kind of reasoning is used by people of all political persuasions to justify theft (i.e. taxes) all the time.

rwwright wrote:Funny -- this kind of reasoning is used by people of all political persuasions to justify theft (i.e. taxes) all the time.

This is not the right place for this discussion.

The right place for this discussion is Tajikistan, because I am unlikely to be anywhere near there in the forseeable future.

Jonfon wrote:this assumes that "right" == majority opinion

Except we're talking about ethicality, not morality. Morals are all about determining which behaviors are good or bad. Ethics are all about determining which behaviors are socially acceptable or unacceptable.

In morals, your conscience lets you decide.
In ethics, that which benefits the majority rules over all.

There is something to be noted, ethicality isn't always desired or desirable. E.g. if you live in a world where the majority of citizens and the government are explicitly pro Islam, but you are Jew, the ethical thing to do is no doubt to convert to Islam. We'd be hard-pressed to find that right however ethical.

Anyone saying "but 999 people can't kill someone" is thinking way to literally.

As to how we can get 999 people to kill someone, I think we actually do that already in several states. IMHO the death penalty is an example of at least 51% of the population deciding to kill a person (in practice only a few dozen make the final decision, but tacitly they have the approval of the majority of the voting populace). And current law agrees that this is not a crime, in fact it is obligatory in some cases, which would make this - in my opinion - a real-life example of X being big enough that killing was considered a victimless crime.