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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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The problem with your reframing however, is that fighting typically implies killing others, even if you are not at risk of getting killed yourself. So if you are a humanitarian, even if you "win", you lose. In other words, the correct choice is obvious only if you don't care about other people's lives.

Imagine a different version where an enemy army is about to attack your village, intending to kill all who stand in its way, but leaving others unharmed. But the enemy isn't reckless. If the village fields a large enough army in its defense, the attack will be too risky, and the enemy will call it off. In that case, the status quo is maintained without any bloodshed.

In that case, just like in the original scenario, it would make sense for you to join the defense if all of the following hold:

  1. You believe some people will choose to fight regardless of the odds.
  2. You care enough about those people to risk your own life to help save theirs.
  3. You believe it's likely your army will reach the critical size necessary to avoid bloodshed.

The rest is just squabbling about probabilities: how much of a risk would you be willing to assume for a chance to save someone else's life?

(By the way, I always hate it when people declare their own point of view as obvious. Even if you are right, you aren't obviously right. And before you say “well, it might not be obvious to a dunce like you, but it's obvious to me, a very intelligent person!”: in my experience there is little correlation between people who declare themselves to be highly intelligent and who are able to demonstrate their intelligence. For example, there are plenty of people who, at least at first, insist that in the Monty Hall problem it's “obviously” pointless to switch.)