Laika_rus wrote:You have to be nice to people not because otherwise you go to hell, but because people will come and kill your dog / burn your house / or you name it, if you have reputation of a scumbag.
Hmm, this is a lot like the "eye-for-an-eye" approach (perhaps w/o the strict liability part). Seems fine as far as it goes; but it is a bit too bounded by "rationality" for me. How about these two additional subtle extensional spins:
1) David Hume might suggest that
before acting as a scumbag you have an innate moral understanding (a sense of sorts) that you yourself would not desire to be scumbagged upon. If your culture is one of respect for fellow travelers, then you desist from the action not out of fear of future reprisal, but out of empathetic respect for the humanity of others.
2) As a child at school one day I recall an early morning recess where we all ran out to the playground on a bright, sunny day. I, along with a large group of others,
randomly chose to run to the merry-go-round: a specific playground apparatus.
Imagine, 15-20 children jammed on this thing. Now, this particular merry-go-round was old, and had become imbalanced over time. It would wobble based on the weight distribution of children upon it. As happens with children, our school yard play progressed to a game; the objective of which was pushing the other children off of the merry-go-round.
As the game went on, I found myself sharing a segment of the merry-go-round with a classmate of mine. As the group turned their attention to him, and began their efforts to push him off, I realized that given the instability of the apparatus, if he was to go, I would soon surely follow. So, I defended him as diligently as I defended myself.
Later that same day, just prior to the afternoon recess, this same fellow said "come with me." I said, "No, I want to play on the merry-go-round again, and I want to go this way" (the shortest route to the apparatus). He said, "Stop, don't go that way" and pointed to the ground in that direction. He saved me from stepping into a big pile of dog crap. Meanwhile, all the other children were freaking out over the mess on their shoes.
Ever since then, I have always wondered about how things might have turned out if I had not realized that he and I were
randomly "connected" via the merry-go-round and I had not defended him.
So, what are the chances that the guy you shoot in a road rage incident today wasn't going to spot and report that crack in the bridge tomorrow that causes the bridge to collapse while you are driving over it? Undoubtedly small, but you will never know, will you? Or, to extend it over generations: the man you kill today doesn't have that child, that has a child, that has a child, etc., that became a doctor, that saves your progeny. Or, more positively, how do you know the man you steal from today won't need to invest time to recoup his losses that he might otherwise have invested in creating "free energy" and abundance for all of us? So, personally at least, whether we perceive it or not, we are all randomly connected, and there is something too cool about the human spirit that I would want to limit (via bad acts) any future possibility at all.
