Which is worst? (Gallup poll of Americans' pissy, punitive and bodily-obsessed moral sentiments)

do you mean which of those things is the worst, or do you mean which of americans' perceptions of those things is the worst perception to have

http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=10&q=201

probably gonna vote 'death penalty' as a stand-in for our justice system as a whole, but suicide is probably the worst thing an individual can do on the list.

i don't have any real problem with the rest, except for polygamy, which is all well and good on a contractual level if you're a commenter on a libertarian blog but let's face it, the shit is creepy and based on abuse.

xp del i don't care! i'm a freewheeling guy.

the only one of these things I'm completely against is the death penalty

yeah likewise, i was gonna say most of these are great. or have no bearing on my conception of morality. but death penalty is an easy worst here for me.

I said the death penalty. Next for me would probably be fur. Not sure where to place suicide. It's not good, for sure.
I think polygamy is okay in theory but not in practice in the majority of the cases.

Pornography more than twice as "bad" as death penalty wtf.

So I only just noticed that this message board will tell you if other messages have been posted while you were in the process of writing yours, and give you the option of changing it. That's a neat feature I wish my other message boards had.

i think the number of suicides who weigh up the moral implications of their act is probly on a par with the number of lions who think about becoming vegan

Death penalty's gonna run this, no? That's certainly my vote.

I don't think affairs (straight or gay) are morally permissible, & I'm pretty ambiguous about abortion (at least as a personal thing---I'm with the consensus about choice, because of the ambiguity). I don't have strong views about the others: certainly I think doctor-assisted suicide is morally permissible, & thus it would be weird to think otherwise about suicide simpliciter.

Death penalty.

xpost we r #1 awsum messig bored

it seems like what with moral relativity and all you could argue that for each act there are cases where it could be moral or immoral depending on the circumstances. cloning humans seems awesome, I can;t wait to make more of me

I'm voting polygamy because the people involved are always ugly

I wonder how these could be combined? ie> Cloning, pr0n, gambling, polgamy,Medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos.. seems like you could do that all in one strange act

Euler do you think affairs are impermissible because they break a bond of trust, because i can see an argument against suicide could be made in the same direction. Except as i say i think it generally takes place somewhere beyond moral agency.

Yeah it's about the promise of fidelity that married couples make to each other. Hah: is there a similar argument against suicide for married couples but not for the unmarried? i.e. how far do the promises of marriage go?

I think a lot of Americans love to love the death penalty. It makes them feel "tough."

its not much of a punishment - it would be worse to be banished to the arctic

xxp

well without visiting dark places i would say that in my most depressed moments nowadays i am aware that suicide cannot be an option for me because i have a responsibility to my children, and by extension my wider family and my friends. maybe suicide could be immoral if it broke certain kinds of trust or responsibility - and working backwards, maybe adultery is only immoral within the context of other aspects of marriage vows (including unwritten ones?) being inviolate?

like there's an assumption underlying marriage vows that neither partner will become radically more unpleasant to their spouse than they were when they sealed the deal?

"Having an affair" doesn't necessarily, to me, carry the same implications as "cheating." For all we know the married person is "allowed" to have an affair. To me "cheating" suggests going against the agreement made in marriage (or other committed relationship) whereas "having an affair" doesn't, necessarily.
I guess it's not a hugely important distinction, since monogamy is an expectation of most marriages at least as far the people polled are concerned.

yeah NV that sounds right re. suicide, which is interesting since it poses (for me at least) questions about what else is impermissible in marriage. Is staying pleasant to your partner part of the promise? Or at least as pleasant as you were when you married? Or when you became engaged?

& yes I don't know about what to say when one partner fails to live up to their part of the marriage deal, does that make the deal null & void? how badly do they have to fail? I guess this is the thought behind annulment but I thought that was just for failure to put out.

IIRC you can only annul if you haven't had sex; if you have, the marriage happened and you have to divorce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annulment#Reasons_for_annulment

here you go

btw surprised no one has yelled at me for my polygamy joke

I think the Church has had a pretty broad understanding of what it is to haven't had sex in order to get an annulment. The "deception" part, in particular, gives a lot of leeway.

i thought yr polygamy joke was funny and also v. tru but was too busy unpicking the threads of the other stuff. god imagine falling out with 3 ugly spouses all at once.

"two wives are allowed in the army but one's too many for me"

In any case, there are many factors to consider when judging a married person having an affair. What if the person has been terribly mistreated or neglected?
Rather than making a blanket judgement of people who have affairs I'd rather consider a broader spectrum of marital misbehavior. But that's not so easy to put in a simple poll such as this.

is pr0n considered polygamy?

depends on if you marry it

It does seem that many people express their morality largely through policing others, rather than taking stock of themselves.

contrariwise, do you think there's anybody out there who remains faithful to one porn actor anytime they engage with porn?

Are you talking about viewers or performers, banter?

"Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin."
-- Ambrose Bierce

I don't have any problem recommending that ugly polygamists kill themselves.

I'm pretty sure I could come up with a scenario where any of these is at least justifiable and also pretty sure I could come with scenarios where any of these is reprehensible.

wonder how these could be combined? ie> Cloning, pr0n, gambling, polgamy,Medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos..

Cloned man bets his third wife she can't fuck his clone three times in a row with her stem-cell derived penis
; winner gets proceeds from pron site downloads.

:o

her stem-cell derived penis

my world is a little bit darker now

What's the friggin' point of doing stem cell research if you can't add a cock to your third wife?!

Note: I didn't even say where.

btw surprised no one has yelled at me for my polygamy joke

― Tom Skerritt Mustache Ride (DJP), Tuesday, May 31, 2011 3:47 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark

idk I've seen some OK looking polygamists on TV and stuff but this does seem true of a large majority of people into polyamory.

i think it's disgusting, all this immorality

lool DJP

tom skerrit moustache ride otm

yay

anyway i live in a genital-free household so i suspect it's silly of me to weigh in on this question

you know what's really "hot"? family values, that's what

mmm my stem cell-created penis just hard thinking about them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9uomrW2Hxg

i'm not saying that i don't love god, but why did He make sex so dirty? i don't want to have to rub my whatchamacallit against someone else's whatchamacallit. particularly if their ethnic background diverges from mine.

but anyway, yeah i fucking hate abortions

The long dresses and braided mousy hair of the polygamist would make almost anyone look homely.

Well, I guess, of the polygamist's wife/wives.

maybe that's what God is into . who are we to judge, after all?

Agreed on the dresses but there are some intricate and impressive hairdos out there:

http://mormonhair.tumblr.com/

I guess I'm an outlier here, as the only things on the list I find morally repugnant in most imaginable circumstances are human cloning, and to a lesser extent the death penalty and wearing fur. Everything else involves consenting adults or cost-benefit balances laden with contigencies.

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljtj3eUKAt1qhtfmeo1_r2_500.png

See? Those are some impressive freaking fishtail braids.

I think braiding gets to be your creative outlet.

i love women and hair and people being creative with hair, but for whatever reason i find that image disturbing. it makes me think of those furry fluorescent lobsters of the deep.

polygamists are hot as shit judging by the hit HBO tv show Big Love

I find that image disturbing because those women could beat you to death with their hair

I think the sister wife look is what got Brigham Young himself to say, "Even an old barn looks good with a new coat of paint." (Possibly my least favorite quote of all time, my mom was saying it to me when she was trying to put blush on me before church when I was all of frigging eight years old.) Anyway it is kind of impressive that it hasn't changed since the 1860s.

polygamists/polyamorists are not at all hot judging by the defunct HBO series Real Sex

The polyamory episode of Real Sex with the naked hippies in the woods scared me for life.

scarred too!

i love the idea that there is anything in common at all btw polygamists and polyamorists

i mean i guess there is on some deep level but come on

"Even an old barn looks good with a new coat of paint."

jesus f christ

i'd love to get some folk from warren jeffs' compound and the cast of shortbus into a room, you know, just see what happens

i love the idea that there is anything in common at all btw polygamists and polyamorists

― goole, Tuesday, May 31, 2011 4:52 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i mean... there is, though.

Singing "Praise to the Man" into someone's asshole during a three-way. xp

i love the idea that there is anything in common at all btw polygamists and polyamorists

― goole, Tuesday, May 31, 2011 4:52 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark

I was pretty careful to draw a distinction between the two.

that movie sucked

I am about to gallop from "offensive humor" to "just plain offensive" so I am stopping now

the jokes were writing themselves tho

guys i just wanted to crack some jokes :(

if the horseshoe fits, wear it brah

lol goole, I still stand by my self-censorship

heh sorry goole. keep on truckin bro.

That only 30% of Americans think pornography is morally acceptable is a drag & explains a lot about why French e.g. advertising is so much better than its American counterpart.

i can see why pictures of naked genitalia are far less acceptable than keeping learning disabled children in cages for years and then injecting them with chemicals that stop their heart beating tho

i like the less explicit forms of pornography. so basically if you're leaving your house in thirty layers of clothes so that you look like a over fleeced-up variation of the michelin man, then that's when my blood starts rushing and i feel like i'm totally ready to mate and engage in coitus. but at the same time, i understand that different people respond to different things.

how about if you are naked and look like the michelin man

talk about tube steak

It's the anti-skid thing I find repellent

AND that's ilx in a nutshell

cut!

i think the number of suicides who weigh up the moral implications of their act is probly on a par with the number of lions who think about becoming vegan

― banter panchali (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, May 31, 2011 3:25 PM (1 hour ago)

^this

it seems like the general attitude toward people who have attempted (or are about to attempt) suicide is that they are ill & that they need the immediate support of loved ones and doctors. and the same idea dominates discourse about specific people who have already killed themselves: they should have gotten help, and why wasn't it provided?

only when the discussion turns philosophical does the "suicide is the most selfish act" argument surface & the dead are berated in the abstract for their lack of compassion for those they left behind. somehow debates tend to focus on the implications of rational, healthy people committing suicide even though society (via modern science/medicine) has for the most part discarded such a simplistic scenario.

imho a person doesn't necessarily have to be mentally ill to kill themself, but they're likely to be in such a desperate, impulse-driven state that it doesn't make sense to retroactively size up their level of compassion and foresight as if they were in a rational mindset at the time. in terms of consequences, killing yourself is one of the worst thing you can do to your loved ones, but an act with terrible consequences is not automatically a morally reprehensible act, especially in a situation as extreme as suicide.

voted for affairs w/ assumption that it's not in context of permission. seems like most explicit transgression esp re vow breaking.

would love to see this poll done for other countries

Doctor-assisted suicide (different numbers from suicide prob bc assumption of fatal/painful illness) and normal Suicide both seem like personal choices. Negative reverberations, but hard to say they are morally problematic (esp since successful suicide doesn't leave a figure to assume moral responsibility). No problem with abortion as I don't believe fetus = human; though I personally find the decision problematic, I don't have the same problem with other ppl making that choice. Baby outside marriage not an issue bc I don't believe marriage is the only context that birth need be conducted thru. I don't believe in hunting animals to extinction but for prolific wildlife I don't have an issue with eating their meat (assuming it's kosher!), testing them for science or wearing their fur. Personally I wouldn't wear fur, but again, no moral compunctions (more aesthetic ones there). I certainly don't have a problem benefiting from medical advances derived from animal testing. And I love eating meat. Absolutely no moral issue with gay/lesbian relationships. No issue with sex between unmarried man + woman. Cloning animals could be cool, though I might be hesitant to eat cloned meat in our Margaret Atwood dystopian future. Pro stem cell research. I enjoy occasional gambling and pornography myself. I don't have an ideological problem with the death penalty, only circumstantial/institutional issues. Divorce seems like it can sometimes actually be a positive moral action, esp if it alleviates unhappiness or if its used in leu of other "solutions" like having kids to save the marriage. Cloning humans is the only one (besides my vote) that I have queasy feelings about but I can't articulate why it might be morally problematic. Only that it feels... idk, fraught with implications? Polygamy seems more value neutral, tho as said above, is probably rarely practiced in a morally positive way.

That turned out to be a lot longer than I expected.

I guess I'm an outlier here, as the only things on the list I find morally repugnant in most imaginable circumstances are human cloning, and to a lesser extent the death penalty and wearing fur. Everything else involves consenting adults or cost-benefit balances laden with contigencies.

I would actually agree with this but without the inclusion of human cloning which, while ill-advised and creepy as fuck, I don't necessarily think is morally objectionable.

Have humans yet attained the science knowhow to clone humans?

I don't even think it's particularly creepy, aside from the motivations that might LEAD someone to do it. But I don't find the fact of it disturbing.

I think maybe I'm having a hard time separating the possible motivations from the fact of it.

I'm always amazed how many books and movies and even people commenting on such things start from the idea that human clones wouldn't have souls, whatever that means. Or would be brainless automatons, or would share the life memories of their progenitor or any other stupid thing. They'd just be people, like an identical twin but of a different age.

i don't see a problem with human cloning really; we have 'clones' already called twins /smug

xp lol

Do keep up. /smugger

Yeah I mean I don't really believe in souls so that's not a problem for me I think that it's just sort drilled into our heads that there is something essentially creepy about it. You know those people who want to clone their dead pets? It's the logical extension of that sort of thing I worry about and more for the people desiring it than the potential clones if that makes sense. Obv this is all speculative because as far as I know people aren't out there actively cloning each other. Uh, right?

that kid actor who played kid fox mulder looked/sounded creepily like what you'd think duchovny would have looked/sounded like at that age.

⊙_⊙

did non-churchy people ever have ethical issues w/ the idea of vitro fertilization 40 years ago in the same way that they have ethical issues w/ cloning today?

i feel like human cloning is going to end up happening no matter what so we might as well start coming up with moral justifications for it

the clone must be hot

The creepy thing bout human cloning I think is that they are people. Whats the practical point of a clone if you can't use their awesome healthy body parts or to stuff your brain into its head once you kick off? But a clone ain't a robo-suit, its a human. Thats where the moral problems come in.

I think its a lot less morally problematic if you're just cloning yourself so you can raise yourself as a child or something. That's just weird, but doesn't have much morality involved IMO. Most of the moral issues - aside from theological ones like 'playing god' - come from the question "what are you going to do with the clone?" not the clone itself.

And no, aside from the dubious claims of the Raelians, no one anywhere has announced the successful cloning of a human zygote/embryo/whatevs that was subsequently carried to term. I mean we've cloned human cells, but not a full, living person. I think there's a UN mandate against it.

i think the creepy thing about human cloning is that it's not that hard to make more people in the first place

anytime someone mentions 'human cloning' i think of this guy -
http://www.conspiracyboy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/serpentor1.jpg
- and i wonder, was it a warning...or a prophecy?

x-post

Oh the Raelians

OK, I was pretty sure but got worried for a second there.

im okay with cloning people as long as we make them live somewhere else

also they dont get names just numbers

Max: The Clonus Horror

genetically modified humans much more likely/imminent than full on human clones is my guess

Which is worst? For me? Or do I have to decide for everyone?

Of the seventeen choices I have personally refrained from committing 13 of them. Of the remaining 4, I have indulged so little in gambling, pornography, and the wearing of fur that they have had a negligible impact on my life. I did choose to have sex outside marriage -- numerous times. I enjoyed it, too!

So, having almost no personal experience of most of these activities, I hesitate to name any one of them as worst. I'd hate to endorse the majority of them as morally uplifting or even morally neutral, either.

I think I'll just let others decide for themselves about this stuff.

for real though since death penalty is gonna walk this i voted 'babies outta wedlock' in a overall damage to society 'dan quayle was right' thing in the atlantic sense. woulda voted 'babies in wedlock' if it was an option. basically if it's within 24 hours of me having been in a grocery store i'm gonna half jestingly but half not jestingly be advocating some like china but more draconian views re: who gets to breed and when.

with the exception of davy crockett hats i don't think i've ever worn fur.

ever worn leather shoes? also,

for real though since death penalty is gonna walk this i voted 'babies outta wedlock' in a overall damage to society 'dan quayle was right' thing in the atlantic sense.

this is pretty much a cop-out, no? since it shifts the question to the overall societal impact it fails to ask about the underlying morality. i know many people who have had children outside the context of a marriage (including within partnerships and single parents who make a choice to become pregnant) that are impossible to call immoral. are the vast number of cases a good thing for most of the people involved? probably not but that doesn't make the entire enterprise bankrupt (unless, I guess, you're a kantian?)

In re to the fur question. I was going to explain earlier that the reason I said it was morally objectionable is because it's completely needless and unnecessary. Do I wear fur? No but I might if it was something I liked and it was second hand. Do I wear leather shoes? Yes but that doesn't mean I think it's "right".

Would be interesting to see (though obviously impossible to capture) a list of which of these the respondents had engaged in because you can be damn certain that a lot of people would be dabbling in things on this list that they'd classified as objectionable.

I wear leather shoes because the plastic ones are shit.

They really are.

This thread would be so asy to hijack.

"easy"

To begin with, 66% of people disapprove of pornography and 99.8% of those respondents that disapprove have used pornography.

end bad porn now.

*disapproves furiously*

"Pornography" is a pretty fucking giant category. I mean there are defs some types of pornography (in the gonzo/illegal minority) that I think are more immoral than anything else on this list. (But I voted death penalty)

Agreed. It's way too broad. I don't think those are the types that most people who voted would have been thinking of (though I could be wrong) but I agree with you totally.

pretty sure i've never worn fur shoes. also disapprove of child pornography and have never used it. unlike SOME people apparently.

totally totally morally object to furry porno.

Also I felt conflicted in voting "death penalty." I mean I think death penalty in the U.S. is basically fucked but every time I think of some absolutist ban of it I think of this letter:

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/6379/purgatorio.jpg

HEY EVERYONE, LISTEN UP: THERE'S THIS GUY ON THE INTERNET WHO CALLS HIMSELF "BALLS" AND HE IS NOT COOL WITH THE FURRIES.

x-post - I've never seen that.

A lot of people would take that as a proof that life imprisonment is worse than death and therefore preferable which is the opposite of what you're saying. Interesting.

Preferable in terms of suitable punishment. Whatever that means.

Oh but I guess if you look at it that way then it seems more morally acceptable than making someone suffer for life. Sheesh. Way to be complicated, death penalty.

SO many people I know who are in favor of the death penalty say it is because it is cheaper than housing a person in jail for life. Which – turning someones life into a pile of dollars and cents like that is one of the most morally repellent things I can think of. Maybe that is why I am against the death penalty, is I hate that argument so much!

Tell them the death penalty costs 3x as much as housing a person for life!

Does it really?

<gullible>

the best thing about that sentiment is that it is not true

x-post - Exactly!

But that's not even true, is it? I thought that keeping people on death row with all the appeals and stuff winds up being a lot more expensive than just keeping someone in prison for life.

It's really expensive!

xps heh!

i guess their comeback would just be 'don't give 'em any lawyers then' but that's not how it works in the US of A (to date)

My mind is reeling guys!!

the only idea, imo, the conservatives have that has any merit is that justice should be speedy -- trials and punishments should happen very close to the crime being committed. but that should happen by a well-ordered and funded criminal system so ppl don't sit in a holding cell for 12 mos waiting for their date, not by, you know, skipping miranda or whatever

lol @ 'criminal system' hardy har

ha

institutionally it is hard to see ANYTHING the death penalty "gets right." i'm also an ideological anti. it just adds savagery on top of savagery imo.

xp wait can we get this straight about what is more expensive? i read 3x in a david grann article last week and thought "huh" without looking anything up. is it all really contingent and complicated etc?

this might have just been the state of texas

Matt I think you're right. I was agreeing with you. I've always heard/read that keeping people on death row is a lot more expensive than imprisoning them for life and have understood this to be largely due to legal costs.

i would love having a big debate re death penalty (my belief that it is at times morally necessary, with my hesitancy over the quality of the institution that operates it, would probably put me at odds with a ton of ilxors) but i think there are threads that already cover this issue extensively?

that's my position, more or less, but going further that i don't think a state can exist that can reliably carry out that punishment

Mordy: Capital Punishment: Should the Death Penalty Still Exist In A 'Civilised Society'?

and yeah there are. i think i've said that exact thing within the last month!

xp

Also my position more or less but the fact that I don't think that the punishment can be carried out reliably coupled with how corrupt and fucked up our justice system is makes me pretty vehemently against it.

You did. It was on the What Should the US have done with Bin Laden had they captured him alive thread iirc.

nb I always found the part of Camus' "Guillotine" essay compelling when he says that if the death penalty is intended to convince criminals not to commit crimes, then it should be public where everyone can see it. He concludes that it isn't public bc it's really about vengeance which sounds about right to me, but vengeance can be a sort of justice imho. There could be advantages to doing it publicly tho. If the masses really want it, maybe it should be in the public sphere where they can see it, and morally I can't think of a problem with doing executions in public (I do have a strong kneejerk aesthetic revulsion towards the idea but I don't see that correlating with any actual ethical objections). It might make us more overtly coarse, but I don't think it would make us empirically more coarse. It could be good to get it out in the open. It could dissuade crimes and if people are really disgusted, they can vote it out of existence. Doesn't really do anyone any good behind closed doors.

i don't think it is the role of the state to take a life, point. it's outside the boundaries of what the justice system should do.

is that tidbit from Harper's?
sounds like the dudes are really asking for doctor-assisted suicide...

It is from Harper's, c 2007! And I agree!

It is kinda bold to be like "just kill me ok???"

they are making a political point though, the president doesn't have the power to do what they ask regardless

i am curious about what morally necessary times you have in mind. i've been thinking about this stuff lately. i can't really point to any coherent explanation for why i recoil at the thought of institutional death of any kind. like i somehow think it's more defensible to kill out of passion! which isn't defensible at all. i guess i'm a self-defense-only kind of guy.

xp to Mordy. i totally agree that if executions are sanctioned and done they should be public.

I don't object morally to elective death penalty for prisoners already sentenced to life, but I wonder how that would work on a practical level. if prisoners were able to swear an oath consenting to die, there'd always be a huge and irreversible risk that they were being coerced by officials. and when it's time to carry out the execution, should the prisoner deliver the lethal dose (or pull the trigger) himself or should an executioner do it? either way the risk of corruption would be enormous, and "kill yourself or I will make the rest of your stay in prison a living hell" isn't a much sunnier prospect than "kill yourself or I will kill your wife and kids".

i don't think it is the role of the state to take a life, point. it's outside the boundaries of what the justice system should do.

― daria-g, Tuesday, May 31, 2011 10:19 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalin

This is how I have been pretty much my entire adulthood. Only recently did I start thinking about this more and wondering if I actually agree with it 100%. I still do lean this way but not with absolute certainty like I did before. Tbh I'm glad that there are other factors which put me very firmly in the against camp. I realize that's a cop out but it does make it easier.

i'm not absolutist on too many issues but the death penalty is one of them (prob influenced by previous life in french theory world, where they think it is barbaric, and they are right!)

haha foucault thinks its barbaric but i think he finds it a lil kinky too

foucault thinks that about EVERYTHING it's part of his charm

x-post lol

yeah well he found a lot of things kinky iirc

I think vengeance is one of the most evil impulses people have. Well, I think it is one of those totally human impulses that is also super fucked up & we should avoid succumbing to it. Personally I think the reason behind the death penalty is a desire for vengeance, at least in the U.S. I don't expect anyone to agree with me as it's just one of those things that turns my sensitive little gut in a primal & near inexplicable manner. I don't have a very good argument for why vengeance is bad besides personal distaste.

Mordy's going to yell at us again if we keep talking about this here.

what's the difference between vengeance and justice?

who was yelling? lol. i don't mind talking about it here.

I kid!

I don't know that I really believe justice exists in the universe! I don't think there is any cosmic force meting out justice and I know for a fact humans aren't capable of delivering it consistently.

what's the difference between vengeance and justice?

answering my own question but i suspect it might just be aesthetics. they have different flavors. if that's true, the repulsion for vengeance is that it sounds unseemly, maybe illegal. but if the death penalty is legal, and the only issue is seemliness...

iwhat's the difference between vengeance and justice?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresteia

Cloning humans, the hell is wrong with all of you.

Always wrong:
The death penalty
Buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur (but it's not a major wrong)

Sometimes wrong:
Married men and women having an affair (if it breaks a promise)
Having a baby outside of marriage (if you can't support it)
Abortion (very late term or without the mother's permission)

What I think is weird about this list, is why does it consist of some legal things, some illegal things, and something that no one has ever done yet (human cloning)?

Prostitution seems like a big overlook.

Good question.

without the mother's permission

Do you mean like in cases where the woman is coerced or forced to abort or something else I'm not getting?

re: the poll - some politician dialed it up maybe? that's how human-animal hybrids made it into the SOTU a few years back, i bet

yeah i don't see any difference between vengeance and justice. i think they help society work, though they aren't as important as other things. like love. LOL. but killing someone exists outside of the accounting of society or the state imo. more justice happens if a murderer lives, and in/to the right person. wow i am turning into a hippy.

If you presume that a cloned human would have the same rights and privileges as any other human, including a safe, nurturing environment in childhood and a proper education, decent health care, eventual citizenship and so on, then a large percentage of the motivation for human cloning evaporates. Also, many of the moral objections disappear at the same time.

Whatever residual motives there might be under those circumstances seem unclear. As mentioned above, making babies the usual way is not hard and many other avenues exist to serve those cases where it is difficult.

all of these are basically a-ok except the death penalty which obv is always wrong and having an affair. suicide is weird and it's tough/problematic to judge someone who decides to take his own life

i think acc. to gallup all of these questions are 'controversies' ie there are signif. numbers of americans supporting the yes and no positions

cloning humans could be problematic too yeah depending on what they're being cloned for

oh and wearing fur isn't very cool either i guess

They could've prob polled drug laws too.

there's a TNG episode where Riker goes around phasering these in vitro Riker clones because they infringed his Riker copyright
-- that was his total moral objection to cloning -- they were cramping his style.
But the clone society needed the clones to keep going, so the solution was polygamy with shanty Irish.
That's weird how many of these poll-options were violated in a single episode.

you have just written
the #1 post of all time

Haha Riker was such a tool.

Riker is probably the best argument against human cloning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck-VIA1GUCY

LOL

voted 'cloning humans' because i think thats probably the most morally/philosophical problematic & also brr the one that bothers me the most instinctually

but i think lots of these are 'wrong' on some level even stuff like pornography or adultery

I don't see anything wrong with human cloning. Twins are pretty creepy and evil though.

it seems like the general attitude toward people who have attempted (or are about to attempt) suicide is that they are ill & that they need the immediate support of loved ones and doctors. and the same idea dominates discourse about specific people who have already killed themselves: they should have gotten help, and why wasn't it provided?

only when the discussion turns philosophical does the "suicide is the most selfish act" argument surface & the dead are berated in the abstract for their lack of compassion for those they left behind

In my limited experience of the issue, I don't think that's true at all. Berating the suicide survivor and stressing the selfishness of the act is definitely a thing that is done, and I think it's possibly a valid and useful response.

v depressing that a great majority think death penalty is morally ok but hey! Abortion is a no no.

one poll i've been interested in starting for awhile would ask: Is there such thing as a moral failing?

xp internally consistent at least. if the fetus is actually a baby, then abortion is killing an innocent. death penalty presumably reserved for the guilty. the better question is (imo) if they really believed abortion is murder than isn't their reaction totally inappropriate? if i thought widespread genocide was occurring I wouldn't just donate money to Jerry Falwell and take a nap.

second than then*

people who believe in the death penalty should be forced to go through a simulated scenario where they're wrongfully accused of 1st degree murder and see just how hilarious it is!

i think your post makes the assumption that people who believe in the death penalty think it's hilarious.

you can both believe in it and think that it's a solemn, grave decision that requires deliberation and certainty

...except most people I know that believe in it not only get some kind of visceral thrill when they read about a guilty party being executed, but also believe that these guilty scum shouldn't get these silly attempts at appeals and should be executed immediately after capture

i agree that ppl who treat life callously should be less thoughtless and learn some empathy

"you can both believe in it and think that it's a solemn, grave decision that requires deliberation and certainty"
I think the people that did believe in it, and were for the deliberation and certainty, now no longer believe in it, like that republican governor who put a moratorium on it.

one poll i've been interested in starting for awhile would ask: Is there such thing as a moral failing?

― Mordy, Wednesday, 1 June 2011 04:01 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

would participate in these moral polls

yeah i don't see any difference between vengeance and justice.

ok this could go either way for me - boring semantic argument, basically. But, if they are considered the same, then I have no time for that conception of justice. Punishment qua punishment achieves nothing - except to slake people's desire for vengeance which, although natural, should be encouraged as little as possible. My ideal penal system would be thoroughly focussed on reform, with a side order of protection, perhaps a splash of deterrence, but no consideration for retribution.

worst to less worse:

death penalty - the only one of these that seems genuinely wrong to me. an almost entirely immoral thing, imo.
medical testing on animals - a difficult judgment, because while it seems terribly immoral (and certainly is just that at its cruelest extremes), the benefits are great.

suicide - i would agree that suicide is a right, but it's also a terrible tragedy. seems so often the product of psychological anguish that (i imagine) could be treated.
doctor-assisted suicide - another terrible moral teeter-totter, like animal testing, but worse. something that should be available, but that could allow appalling abuses.

abortion - i'm entirely pro-choice, but i'm not going to say that the moral calculus here is simple, or that i haven't fudged the numbers somewhere.

pornography - a fine thing supported by an awfully shady industry, reeks of desperation, often sad
gambling - similar

poll needed prostitution and capitalism/communism options

Cloning in the real world isn't like the comedy movies. Cloning non-human animals (so far) is a pretty hit and miss process with respect to health outcomes, and as human biological development is near identical at the biochemical/cellular level, cloning a human would at present be akin to knowingly passing on the gene for Huntington's chorea.

Dolly the sheep was euthanized at half her expected lifespan suffering from debilitating arthritis and lung disease. I suspect great difficulty in somatic cell clones with mental retardation, early onset degenerative disease, and numerous details like getting the telemerase activity right (too little: progeria, too much: rampant neoplasms).

yeah i don't see any difference between vengeance and justice.

Back in the days of wergild, the line was blurred. Now, if you commit murder, while you mnay still be liable to civil penalties to a close relative of your victim, the crime is an offense against the state, a kind of republican stand-in for a breach of the Kin's peace. It's basically how the common law got past blood feuds.

"yeah i don't see any difference between vengeance and justice."

This is really stupid. If a guy steals $1000 from me, and is required by the court to pay me $1000 in restitution and do some time, it has nothing to do with vengeance. I just want my fucking money back. Plus the time he serves deters (hopefully) others from doing the same.

i don't see any difference between vengeance and justice. i think they help society work...

― hippy borthday, free wings for u (Matt P), Tuesday, May 31, 2011 7:46 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

to take the vengeance vs. justice thing a little farther, they are quite similar when viewed from a sufficient distance. the basic idea in both cases is that unacceptable behavior must carry punitive consequences. "punitive consequences," however, are the entire substance of vengeance: "you have stolen from me, so now i must kill you." vengeance is personal and exists only in the satisfaction of an emotional need. it is thus chaotic, unpredictable and socially destabilizing. that's a key point: pure, personal vengeance is very bad at helping society work. it causes at least as many problems as it solves. one man's proper vengeance is another's unforgivable transgression, and so on into sophocles.

justice is a depersonalized version of this, where responsibility for judgment and punishment fall not to a wronged individual or subgroup, but to the social body as a whole. it's an attempt (only partially successful, of course) to drain the chaos of personal passion, such as the burning desire for vengeful satisfaction, from ourpursuit of "the just." this allows for more predictable/fair decision making, which protects social harmony. it also allows, in the long run, for the development of alternative aims in the administration of justice, such as rehabilitation, arbitration, settlement, etc. where vengeance boils down to, "you did wrong, now you must pay," justice can concern itself with the complex needs of the larger social body and with the responsible management of perceived threats.

If that is actually the distinction, you can't criticize the death penalty for being vengeance instead of justice. After all, it's the social body creating more predictable/fair decision making, etc.

Never looked at the other charts, but ...

http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/388yfnwkm0qoldmnnniyqg.gif

... so the secondary finding in this survey is: old people hate sex and all things sex-related.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vengeance
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/justice?show=0&t=1307045959

These are related but distinctly different concepts; one is direct, blind retaliation while the other involves adherence to some standard of fairness.

xpost In other news, apparently I'm an old soul.

Old enough not to know how to embed images.

http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/388yfnwkm0qoldmnnniyqg.gif

If that is actually the distinction, you can't criticize the death penalty for being vengeance instead of justice. After all, it's the social body creating more predictable/fair decision making, etc.

― Mordy, Thursday, June 2, 2011 1:19 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

that's complex, though, because the distinction between vengeance and justice is never so clear as we might like to pretend. a individual's ostensibly personal sense of what constitutes "rightful vengeance" will probably reflect/enact their culture's values wr2 justice, and the state's administration of supposedly dispassionate justice obviously exists in large part to satisfy the public's baser needs. the trick is balance.

in my opinion, the death penalty is unacceptable because i think that the indulgence of blood-thirst is almost always a terrible social mistake. each barbarity gives license to another, and seemingly enlightened societies can slide quickly down that slope. i personally see no need for it, and the intentional infliction of needless death strikes me as criminal, as murderous.

the death penalty is unacceptable because i think that the indulgence of blood-thirst is almost always a terrible social mistake. each barbarity gives license to another, and seemingly enlightened societies can slide quickly down that slope.

^ similar to the argument i'd apply to tortue, btw, no matter what the circumstance. we become what we permit, and we're always looking towards what we'll become next. torture, otoh, is more easily justified in terms of basic need: "we must have the information, lives and the security of the state depend on it!" even so, i can't conscience the amoral barbarity. i think societies require idealistic standards, moral visions that they intend to live up to, even when they fail. absent a clear set of such standards, it's hard justify any moral position, everything becomes a matter of cold pragmatism, the mechanical interaction of desire, power and situational utility.

fwiw, abortion, suicide and euthanasia can be opposed on similar grounds. ethics is a bitch.

.. so the secondary finding in this survey is: old people hate sex and all things sex-related.

But the 35-54 year olds are the ones who hate divorce the most!

all of their loser boomer parents split up, is why!

Yeah, I figured it was along the lines of some people are still bitter about their parents divorcing.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Honestly, I'm really only against the death penalty because the criminal justice system is such a travesty. If we had Judges (a la Dredd) who obliterated violent criminals upon witnessing their violent crimes, I can't say as I'd have much of an issue with that whatsoever.

we do, though, right? american cops kill people with numbing regularity. can't say that their administration of "justice" is any more equitable than that of our courts though...

rob schneider was not the check and balance the founding fathers intended.

xpost

Yeah, it's true, and it's just an extension of the aforementioned totally fucked criminal justice system. I don't know that there's any regulatory system I'd legitimately support, but from a moral standpoint, I have no qualms with violent sociopaths being put to death. Violation of the social contract to that extent kinda means it no longer applies to you, AFAIC. Which I know isn't a terribly popular viewpoint in more liberal circles, but I don't expect others to agree with my stance.

but by being violent sociopaths, aren't they mentally ill? there's probably more justification for executing garden variety sociopaths,
like average joes who scrimp on construction materials for falling overpasses and such -- like they didn't exactly intend to kill anyone,
but on some level they pretty much did.

What I'm saying, basically, is you could make a pretty dece argument that lots of people need to die already. Ha ha.

But, yeah. This is why I can't imagine being okay with any actual implementation of the death penalty. I don't want to make that judgment call and I'm not really comfortable with anyone else making it, either.

The only thing in the list I can think of that I think of as always wrong is the death penalty.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

closer than i thought

Gay or lesbian relations 2

this is doing my head in

I forgot to put in my vote for pornography.