Deserving Happiness

[internet]

There's a hypothetical and I'm curious as to how the people of smogon will react to it.

Person A has no desires that can be described as particularly evil.

Person B has desires that can be described as particularly evil. He wants to engage in pedophilia and genocide. However, he has neither stated this desire nor acted upon it in any manner.

Person C desires pedophila and genocide and has stated these desires openly. However, he has not acted upon them otherwise.

Person D has willingly engaged in pedophilia and genocide, and wants more.

You decide to interfere with the lives of these four people.

In no case after your interference will A, B, C, or D engage in evil acts. However, you can decide their quality of life, which is measured on a scale of 0 (squalid, unfulfilling, and depressing) to 100 (luxurious, engaging, and fun).

EDIT: so the question is what quality of life you assign to each of them.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

100
0
0
0

@below 100 x4, I believe anything else is collective punishment basically.

 

[Moron5]

I personally believe that A, B, And C are equally innocent despite their differing mindsets, they all haven't acted on anything. However, B and C might need help either through therapy or companionship of some kind to "ease" their unlawful desires. D having actually committed the crime, needs to learn to suffering of the consequences done to earn said action, but not to an insane degree of torture.
In conclusion: ABC => 100%
D=> <50%

 

[internet]

In case anyone wants a further exercise, what quality of life would you assign to all four of them if you had to assign them all four of them the same quality of life?

 

[Blazade]

The thing about "in no case will they commit these evil acts" is you don't get to take that assumption a lot of the time which runs counter to intuition.

C is also kind of complicated because they can by openly admitting to these desires rally and organize others while causing harm. At the very least we cross into cultural bounds which distinguish C from B.

I'm not really a fan of judgement for the sake of judgement, since this doesn't affect the lives of the community it's basically just punishing people for how I feel about them, but I will say that A should be equal to B under the law and under this reward system. Those who choose not to act and are careful not to even indirectly cause the harm they may desire are not evil, however an outside observer might percieve their soul.

In this scenario it should also be considered that we're giving these people happy lives this eliminating their need for their outlets that would otherwise replace their attempts at happiness.

 

[Drew]

I don't understand why you put genocide and pedophilia at the same level. Like pedophilia is horribly, monstrous, and disgusting, but literally murdering an entire race of people solely on the basis of said race is on a higher level. Like for example I don't think someone with thoughts of pedophilia that doesn't act on them deserves a terrible life, but someone with legitimate thoughts of fucking genocide deserves at best a bad life.

 

[Plaessy]

cant answer, overly simplified personalities

 

[Ortheore]

I don't understand why you put genocide and pedophilia at the same level. Like pedophilia is horribly, monstrous, and disgusting, but literally murdering an entire race of people solely on the basis of said race is on a higher level. Like for example I don't think someone with thoughts of pedophilia that doesn't act on them deserves a terrible life, but someone with legitimate thoughts of fucking genocide deserves at best a bad life.

uh, he doesn't actually state anywhere that they're on the same level. It doesn't really matter which one gets treated as being worse than the other, the point is to create a character that can by any reasonable standard be described as evil.

In any case, if someone has these sentiments but refrains from even expressing them, is that not acting in a moral way? It's possible for people to have urges to commit such acts, but they refrain from doing anything because they know it's immoral. Would you punish such individuals then?

Anyhow, my thoughts align with Blazade, A and B should not be punished, C is somewhat bad, while D is obviously bad. Don't know what I'd actually do other than max out the quality of life for A and B, because I don't really like the idea of causing other people to suffer just because they "deserve" it, but I don't really know how rigid I am on that principle so idk I'd probably compromise somewhat

 

[GatoDelFuego]

I don't think b and c are different in any way. Nowhere does it say that c is openly advocating for pedophilia/genocide, but rather has admitted that they desire them. If we're punishing people for openly stating their desires plainly but not acted on them, then I believe that we should apply the same punishment to someone that holds the same desires but has kept it secret.



I debated putting 100/100/100/0 because that would actually conform to my moral beliefs in real life (I can't justify punishment for something that hasn't yet happened) but judging by the setup I'm REQUIRED to assign qualities of life to them, so if I'm getting looped into this game then everybody will be playing my rules for sure.