So guys, it just came to me. What if, by genetics, you known that a particular baby is very likely to become a criminal ( like XXY humans )? does that give you the right to kill or imprison them for life to prevent that? More broadly, what if, say in the future we have a time machine and can go to any timelapse you want and you decided to kill , say Hitler? would that be morally exceptable?
This is a thread about morals ( and reviving the necro thread LOL ). So, would that hypothetical actions i depicted would be "morally acceptable" and why?
Both will stay purely hypothetical. Criminality is not defined by your genes, the best they do is a certain predisposition, but that is never enough to pass a "reventive" judgement (which is likely not even the best preventive measure). Time travel is just physically impossible, at least I think that way.
But for the sake of the argument, here goes something.
1) If a certain individual is highly likely to become a criminal, statistics would suggest we consider them criminal by proxy to ensure safety. However, it is immoral (and inconceivable) to imprison someone who has not yet done anything, even less if it is a baby. Also, I would argue that if genetics would actually lead to such high predispositions, prenatal measures are less immoral (screening fertilized egg cells and abort those with a high "risk".
2) Changing the past would likely have unforeseeable consequences. It is in my opinion not responsible to prevent a past evil, because you have no idea of how it affects the timeline. It may as well lead to a bigger evil, which might be considered immoral. Also, time paradoxon.
2) Changing the past would likely have unforeseeable consequences. It is in my opinion not responsible to prevent a past evil, because you have no idea of how it affects the timeline. It may as well lead to a bigger evil, which might be considered immoral. Also, time paradoxon.
I myself don't think anything can be done to change the future, as there are too many variables. Any attempt to do so could just as easily cause the future we are trying to avoid (Kinda like Oedipus, the entire thing was caused by his parents and later himself trying to prevent the thing from happening).
2) Changing the past would likely have unforeseeable consequences. It is in my opinion not responsible to prevent a past evil, because you have no idea of how it affects the timeline. It may as well lead to a bigger evil, which might be considered immoral. Also, time paradoxon.
What if you change the concept of morality in itself? Would'nt that prevented the act of being "evil" and "immoral", as the standard has changed? About Time paradox, i think it can be prevented by, assuming the supposed time traveller has a metaphysical form (like God), the time traveller going back to the past and changed some variables, quite akin to a scientific experiment, until no time paradox happens/the "scientist" got the best outcome he could get
I myself don't think anything can be done to change the future, as there are too many variables. Any attempt to do so could just as easily cause the future we are trying to avoid
what i thought is that if somehow someone could change all those variables, then the future would undeniably change.
What if you change the concept of morality in itself? Would'nt that prevented the act of being "evil" and "immoral", as the standard has changed?
If you change the morals, the concept of immorality would obligatorily change with it. But first, I have to ask how you would even do this. Second, assuming you found a way to do so, why would you need time travel at all? Change morality in the present, and past acts will be judged by this new morality automatically.
what i thought is that if somehow someone could change all those variables, then the future would undeniably change.
Of course the future would change, that's what he said. The point was that we could not be certain that we would have made the world better, or actually worse. The only loophole to this problem I see is if the time traveler was omniscient and knew exactly what he is doing and how it will affect every single quark in the universe.
