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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sejs" data-source="post: 1691340" data-attributes="member: 4910">Touche.  However, without any empathy Greatest Good is defined Greatest Good For You, which may or may not affect other people - you don't know (or necessarily care), because they're not you.  Without any empathy the concept of "I like this, so other people might like this, too" is just beyond your ability to fathom.  Heh, social creatures are -supposed- to have some form of empathy.  It's a survival trait.  Not having any is a serious dysfunction, and a species that relies on interrelation and cooperation to thrive (like humans or ants), that also is devoid of empathy is a species that's doomed to extinction.The cost/benefit equation doesn't quite work without emotion, because without it you don't any motivation to benefit anyone that either isnt you, or whose benefit doesn't directly influence you.  Why should you assist someone if doing so will in no way generate a positive feedback?  It just makes no sense.  All you're doing then is wasting resources pointlessly, like throwing money into the ocean.  It would be a much smaller, more centralized system, and the larger it gets, the more it breaks down.  Why should I pay into welfare if I'm never going to need it?  Why repair a road if I never drive on it?  Why should I have to pay for any education other than mine?  Why should I pay for infrastructure that I'm never going to benefit from?The rock/hard place type moral questions don't always work, primarily because they're not always good vs evil decisions.  Child on the Tracks vs Train Full of Passengers is a no-brainer: paste the child, both from a traditional morality, and our alternate that we're working with.  What it comes down to is that the child's death is equal to a single death of a passenger on that train, and a packed, speeding train bailing off the tracks at full clip, pounding into the earth and grinding to a halt in which not a single person dies would be a miracle so grand it would border on direct divine intervention.  Choosing the one death over the many deaths isn't an evil decision.  It's lamentable that you were forced to make that decision, and it's tragic that it had to happen, but it is not evil.  Train > Child is Good vs Neutral, Child > Train is Stupid vs Good.  Even if you choose the child over the train, you're not making the decision with evil intent, you're hoping againt hope to play that margin, and that it'll pay off.  Foolish.  Amazingly so.  But not evil. It's pretty much the same with the plague example, just without the numbers being as clear-cut.  Lamentable, but with honestly good intent.-Interesting bit on the First Blood adventure thing, by the way.  Mind if I steal it?</blockquote>

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