When Bad Things Happen to Bad People

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Let's try another example and see if it helps clear things up for people.

If someone steals something and the victim of the theft then steals it back, was the second action in fact theft? Legally, it usually would be, ethically I think the answer is more up in the the air.

My ethics say, in that scenario, the action was just. Law says not. But I'm already of the opinion that rules and laws are mostly baseless and largely nonsense.

I know it bothers you when I don't conform to what you expect someone of my views to be like, but you really need to stop putting words in my mouth and giving inferences you make from my statements the same weight as the statements themselves.

Where did I say anything about granting anyone any rights? Where do I say that anyone is exempted from the law?

What makes my hypothetical situation not hypothetical? That you dislike the implications?

Where did I say anything about anyone that's mad at his wife?

For such a judgmental guy, you really seem opposed to the idea of anyone else using their own judgment; one might even call that hypocritical.

Your inability to connect your suggestions (such as pushing people in front of buses) with random summary execution is one of those things that makes this site so amusing.

Almost as amusing as your seeming incomprehension of the word "hypothetical".

Here's a a little help for you:

Why do you think that a merely theoretical proposal and your theoretical reaction excuses you for responsibility from that reaction? Saying it's theoretical has no effect on your judgmental abilities. If you feel the idea of proposing an action has no relationship to reality then your discussion has no worth.

So you're saying that I'm "responsible" for the fictional actions (that I didn't even attribute to myself) that I described in an imaginary scenario in order to illustrate an intellectual point?

Again, I don't get the point.

What is the value of creating an imaginary scenario with a hypothetical action and theoretical results if it cannot be applied to reality?

I didn't say that the principle couldn't be applied to reality, you're confusing the hypothetical situation with the actual idea that I'm trying to convey.
Nearly all scientific inquiry starts along similar lines, sometimes it turns out to be applicable, sometimes not, but the process itself is still valuable. Look at some of the higher level research being done in physics, those guys have to convince others to pony up billions for complex equipment to test some of their theories with no guaranteed results, would you say that's a waste of time?

Am I?

It is easy to construct a hypothetical situation where the implications are black and white and the results of an action are part of the hypothesis; however (as I pointed out earlier) in reality the situation would not be that clear cut and the results would be unknown.

Did you consider it to be a waste of time when we were discussing the possibility of Sand and Ruveyn being fictional characters? If we had come to a conclusion on that point it might have effected the way we respond to their posts, but how is any conclusion we come to here going to effect what we do in the real world?

I don't know about the worthy Sand, but I am as real as rain.

ruveyn

It's not raining here. You're probably as real as me but my left leg keeps dissolving in purple smoke and I continually have to grow another one. At least that's what my other head keeps insisting. And it's as right as snow.

Well, I'd have to say that as many people would want to control karma in situations like this, there are problems with this, first of all, to determine if the person is actually 'bad' accurately, and it is not about defining what is bad but wether our impressions are correct, I mean, if you want to do something to X person and believe he deserves this, it would be because you had the perception that X has done Y, the issue is wether X has actually done Y, and wether you have a good basis on it. The issue is not as simple as probably few might put it, people often are driven by their emotional reactions towards things they consider bad, without actually analyzing things, wether their impressions are correct or not.

Second, the casting stones, although that probably wouldn't be much of an issue.

Third, another problem, it happens that if X is an easy target, it will get done, but if X is powerful it would be harder or even impossible to do something if it isn't convenient for you to do so, then likely you would not "punish" him, Let's say X is a gang member and you know that they will come after you if you do something to X, in such cases X is getting away with this, so where would be the justice?

So let's add this to this hypothetical scenario, what if the pimp is a member of a criminal organization? what is likely to happen to you after the criminal organization learns that you killed him? Would you rather not do anything to avoid getting killed or worse?

That's way too general to answer.

Late comer on this, haven't read a lot of the posts but my verdict: it depends on what kind of 'bad' thing has happened. If it's of a general pitch or yaw of the situation is that they shouldn't be messing with good people - its positive. If its the kind of thing that they'd learn nothing from, simply irritates them, and has no effect aside from them going out and beating on other good or bad people to ease their frustration - the effect is generally negative.

We always have this problem of who is good and who is bad. It's a tough call.