Ethical paradox: Would You Kill Baby Hitler?

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AspE
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01 Dec 2015, 7:21 pm

Rollo wrote:
Here's another what-if question. If the Nazis had won the war, would the modern-day masses be saying the same things about Roosevelt and Churchill as they now say about Hitler (madman! psychopath! etc)? My answer is an emphatic yes. The masses just parrot what authority tells them to.

No, because they obviously exhibited different traits. The Nazis would just call them incompetent or reactionary.



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01 Dec 2015, 11:04 pm

Rollo wrote:
Here's another what-if question. If the Nazis had won the war, would the modern-day masses be saying the same things about Roosevelt and Churchill as they now say about Hitler (madman! psychopath! etc)? My answer is an emphatic yes. The masses just parrot what authority tells them to.


But it can't seriously argued that Roosevelt or Churchill can be compared to Hitler, who was a genuine genocidal maniac. It's not just a matter of the masses parroting what's told to them in this case.


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02 Dec 2015, 7:59 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
Rollo wrote:
Here's another what-if question. If the Nazis had won the war, would the modern-day masses be saying the same things about Roosevelt and Churchill as they now say about Hitler (madman! psychopath! etc)? My answer is an emphatic yes. The masses just parrot what authority tells them to.


But it can't seriously argued that Roosevelt or Churchill can be compared to Hitler, who was a genuine genocidal maniac. It's not just a matter of the masses parroting what's told to them in this case.


Yes it is.



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02 Dec 2015, 2:33 pm

Rollo wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Rollo wrote:
Here's another what-if question. If the Nazis had won the war, would the modern-day masses be saying the same things about Roosevelt and Churchill as they now say about Hitler (madman! psychopath! etc)? My answer is an emphatic yes. The masses just parrot what authority tells them to.


But it can't seriously argued that Roosevelt or Churchill can be compared to Hitler, who was a genuine genocidal maniac. It's not just a matter of the masses parroting what's told to them in this case.


Yes it is.


When did Churchill or Roosevelt exterminate millions of noncombatants for the sake of an evil, racist ideology?


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02 Dec 2015, 6:25 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
Rollo wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Rollo wrote:
Here's another what-if question. If the Nazis had won the war, would the modern-day masses be saying the same things about Roosevelt and Churchill as they now say about Hitler (madman! psychopath! etc)? My answer is an emphatic yes. The masses just parrot what authority tells them to.


But it can't seriously argued that Roosevelt or Churchill can be compared to Hitler, who was a genuine genocidal maniac. It's not just a matter of the masses parroting what's told to them in this case.


Yes it is.


When did Churchill or Roosevelt exterminate millions of noncombatants for the sake of an evil, racist ideology?


Roosevelt was already in the ground but Truman was the guy that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing mostly civilians. Our firebombing of Tokyo killed almost just as many of the atom bombs, many many German civilians died in our bombing raids as well. History is written by the victor, most of us wouldn't be around if the Nazis had won the war so in whatever unfortunate parallel dimension that is I imagine yes they'd probably paint all the allied leaders as lunatic criminals and excuse their own actions as necessary.



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02 Dec 2015, 7:12 pm

Jacoby wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Rollo wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Rollo wrote:
Here's another what-if question. If the Nazis had won the war, would the modern-day masses be saying the same things about Roosevelt and Churchill as they now say about Hitler (madman! psychopath! etc)? My answer is an emphatic yes. The masses just parrot what authority tells them to.


But it can't seriously argued that Roosevelt or Churchill can be compared to Hitler, who was a genuine genocidal maniac. It's not just a matter of the masses parroting what's told to them in this case.


Yes it is.


When did Churchill or Roosevelt exterminate millions of noncombatants for the sake of an evil, racist ideology?


Roosevelt was already in the ground but Truman was the guy that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing mostly civilians. Our firebombing of Tokyo killed almost just as many of the atom bombs, many many German civilians died in our bombing raids as well. History is written by the victor, most of us wouldn't be around if the Nazis had won the war so in whatever unfortunate parallel dimension that is I imagine yes they'd probably paint all the allied leaders as lunatic criminals and excuse their own actions as necessary.



No one is saying that Allied behaviour was perfect, but they never attempted to murder whole ethnic groups. Rather than pointing a finger at Roosevelt and Churchill, I think it would make a lot more sense to show how Stalin had been able to hide his mass murder from the world, as he was on the winning side.


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02 Dec 2015, 7:22 pm

No, because Hitler was just one of many distraught Germans soldiers who were in a bad way after Germany's defeat and humiliation at the end of WWI. If Hitler didn't lead the Nazis someone else would of. Not really a question though since time travel is impossible. What's done is done. Besides even if you could it would make the existence of most people alive today void. Would you damn the living of now to save the dead from another time?



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03 Dec 2015, 12:25 am

Feyokien wrote:
No, because Hitler was just one of many distraught Germans soldiers who were in a bad way after Germany's defeat and humiliation at the end of WWI. If Hitler didn't lead the Nazis someone else would of. Not really a question though since time travel is impossible. What's done is done. Besides even if you could it would make the existence of most people alive today void. Would you damn the living of now to save the dead from another time?

It's not murder if they were never born.



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03 Dec 2015, 6:49 am

It would have happened anyway.

Germany was seriously downtrodden, what with WWI reparations and the Depression and all. Hitler wasn't a unique anomaly in space, time, or human nature (just ask Stalin, Pol Pot, a bunch of guys in Africa...). Genocide is encoded somewhere in the ugly, nasty side of human behavior.

A lot of Germans wanted a better situation, regardless of just how they got it, and someone to blame. Another anti-Semitic maniac (or other ethnic group) would have come along and stepped into the breach. Little Adolf wasn't the only bigoted charismatic maniac out there. He's just the one history remembers.


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03 Dec 2015, 2:06 pm

looniverse wrote:
AspieOtaku wrote:
If I knew what he was going to be as a grown up? Yeah I would kill him with a crossbow!


How could you know? Is the future immutable?
Well? I live in the present and learned about Hitler from History class that he was responsible for the deaths of over 6 million Jews, if I had a time machine and ran into Adolf before he was going to execute his plan and kill him with a crossbow, those 6 million lives would be saved.


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19 Feb 2016, 9:49 pm

AspieOtaku wrote:
looniverse wrote:
AspieOtaku wrote:
If I knew what he was going to be as a grown up? Yeah I would kill him with a crossbow!


How could you know? Is the future immutable?
Well? I live in the present and learned about Hitler from History class that he was responsible for the deaths of over 6 million Jews, if I had a time machine and ran into Adolf before he was going to execute his plan and kill him with a crossbow, those 6 million lives would be saved.


It seems apparent to me that sociopaths make war, and torture to get what they want as fast and easy as possible for themselves due to a complete lack of empathy, ultimately controlling overpopulation for a later date.

He was the same as his father before him. Can't change the past, but for the future, you could always target, and snip.

Since there are too many people on the planet, and too many wars still exist, might as well do some more random snipping as well.



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20 Feb 2016, 2:46 am

No, No I wouldn't. Assuming I have a time machine, I would go back in time to positively influence key points in Hitler's life so that he couldn't do what he did. I would only take another life if I absolutely had to.


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20 Feb 2016, 2:54 am

No, for two reasons:

1. It would influence history and perhaps produce an even more undesirable outcome. We are not omniscient, and so we can't account for all the variables in order to decide whether killing him would actually be better than letting history play itself out naturally.

And it's likely that many of us would no longer even exist if it were accomplished.

2. I believe it to be unethical to kill a person who has yet done no wrong.



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20 Feb 2016, 5:20 am

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
If I learned anything from Command & Conquer: Red Alert, it's that if Hitler were erased from history, Stalin would have simply taken his place. You would have to go waaay further back in history to prevent what is currently happening in the middle east.


basically. without history, future generations won't have to learn from those mistakes, and they'll make those mistakes ten-fold worse.


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20 Feb 2016, 5:23 am

Killing Hitler would create as sorts of paradoxes and ripple effects that can damage the time-space continuum. The best thing is to slide from dimension to dimension and see where history changed. For the better or worse. If I went to the past let say 20 years and hand myself useful information, I would also be changing the timeline.



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20 Feb 2016, 8:55 am

No, simply because the changes it would make to history would be incomprehensible. The world could be totally different to how it is now. Messing with history in any way could cause any number of unintended consequences. Best to leave the past in the past.