No. From a purely factual standpoint, minorities have less success and opportunities in their lives than majorities.
No. Nothing is ever simple.
No. But this one is interesting. There is that morality test: If you were hiding from soldiers with 20 other people and had a baby, and it began crying, would you suffocate it to save the 20 other people you’re with, or would you allow everyone to be caught and killed anyway? It’s supposed to cause inner turmoil thinking about it, but I think it would make sense to suffocate the child and save the 20 others. It would obviously be a horrific situation, regardless.
It truly depends on the situation, IMHO. If there was 1 child and 3 sickly, elderly people and I had to choose, I would probably choose the child who hasn’t lived yet. But this is a hypothetical question that will likely never happen to any of us.
Burn the flag, immediately. I’d burn 100 flags to save two random people. My patriotism isn’t directly correlated to how much I cherish my country’s flag. In fact, I think it would be more patriotic to be the American who chose to save lives over objects.
Consenting adults… No. Let your kink flag fly, sweeties.
I’m considered to be a pretty far ‘left’ American, though I don’t commit to any parties specifically.
All of them were fairly easy for me except 1 and 3 - 1 because I fall somewhere in the middle, 3 because I don’t have kids, so saying I’d let mine die seems a little empty. In the end, 2-Left.
Oh, and I’d seriously question the sanity of anyone who would let two people die to save a flag. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone with those values, regardless of political affiliations. I hope.
You’re right. It’s easy to say “I’ll do anything to save my child”, but it gets more complex than that. The question is very close to asking if you would murder two random strangers to save your child.
Not sure that adultery should fall under #5. The actual sex act is between the two consenting adults; the adultery aspect of it expands beyond the sex act and includes someone who is not consenting.
Anyways, my answers would be 1) No, 2) Not enough info to say, 3) Yes, 4) No, 5) Leaning towards no, though I could probably be talked into “yes” for suicidal stuff.
1.) No. I think choices a parent makes while raising their children would more of an impact.
2.) Yes. I would employ Occam’s razor for both.
3.) Yes. I would come with fair amount of anguish.
4.) No. It is just a piece of cloth.
5.) No. I am sure there are some pretty disgusting people out there but if they are consenting adults it’s not my bedroom.
I suppose that makes “3 Left” which probably fits.
I am not surprised that only one right-leaning respondent said “0” or “1,” but I am surprised that seven left-leaning people said “4” or “5” (even if a couple were mis-votes).
I’m mulling doing a 2.0 version, fixing some of the issues that arose here. Perhaps it would also be better to categorize each question’s responses by ideological lean instead of the aggregate.
As for question #1, I don’t agree with the criticism that “mostly” is too vague. Obviously, if you object that causes simply cannot be quantified, then no such question will ever be sensible. But if you agree to attempt to quantify, then I think mostly is pretty clear. Perhaps “majority” would be clearer or 51%, but I take those as synonyms. “Position in life” is obviously vague, but I’m not sure it is more vague than say happiness or socioeconomic status or similar ideas getting at how much individual choices matter.
Question #2 seems OK to me. Suggestions on that one?
I think I would probably edit question #3 to say “should” rather than “would,” as suggested. And I would edit #4 to try to remove the patriotism angle and just keep it as a Peter Singer hypothetical. Maybe make it $100.
Adultery is an interesting issue and I can see how question #5 left that open to interpretation. I think 2.0 would probably expressly exclude adultery (and perhaps harm to third parties altogether). The mutilation thing is interesting. My hypothesis would be that right-leaning people would tend to be more likely to answer “yes” because of the mutilation angle, but who knows.
Does that mean you think people don’t have a right to voluntarily end their own lives?
I took as given that we weren’t considering mentally ill people being manipulated, because manipulated consent isn’t consent. So, in that situation, assuming both were mentally competent, she has the right to choose to be killed. Otherwise, they don’t, because she didn’t really consent. So your objection doesn’t bother me.
Though, in typing this up, I did miss something. The actual rule is that you don’t have a right to interfere with the actions of consenting adults as long as their actions do not cause harm to others.
So, let’s say, someone found not paying their taxes sexy. Or both of them exposing themselves to children. Or if you get off on destroying other people’s property or starting fires without adequate supervision. Those could all be wrong. (And, yes, one is far more wrong than the others.)
So take off one 0-Left and change it to 1-Left.
As for the rest: I do not have the right to kill innocent people, period. Murdering for your kid is still murder. The majority of people live in bad conditions through no fault of their own. I have an ethical requirement to save a life if the cost is so small.
And it is impossible to express anything in words without simplifying.