The argument from “proportionality” is of course just a story for the mass audience; the killing is not done indiscriminately, but against designated target-demographics whose collective moral status is systemically judged as deficient. While demographic generalisations by the rulers and the social/economic/ideological coercion occurring at the population level inevitably capture many outsiders and social dissenters in the meat-grinder of systemic adjustments, a degree of choice is allowed, and is apparently integral to the process of systemic determinations of moral status. In short, there is a narrow path through the meat-grinder, with a lot of sense and bit of luck, or with a little sense and a lot of luck.

So many layers of the narrative onion are on display in this article and comments. https://www.timesofisrael.com/vaccines-for-childrens-diseases-begin-flowing-into-gaza-as-infection-rates-soar/

It is incommensurably more satisfying to be discriminated against and yet not submit, than to have privileges conditional on submission.

Here is a question for which i do not have a good answer: when murderers kill murderers, or when fools destroy themselves instead of others, is there a net gain for human consciousness? Is more death, in any possible calculus, beneficial to consciousness?

Hypothesis: modern armed conflicts are instigated with the primary purpose of allowing the most belligerent and authoritarian people to cull one another, effectively removing themselves from the gene pool.

People become indignant about the moral accusations directed at others only if they identify with those others and condone their actions. Their indignation is a commitment to share responsibility.

The worst possible outcome for human spirit is not war but a state of peace in which 'the same' people despise one another, unable to generate meaning together but only degrade it, and their consciousness fades.

A category mistake: a) objective sex is different from subjective gender, b) sex and gender can objectively ‘match’, otherwise gender is objective anyway, therefore c) subjective gender is both subjective and not-subjective at the same time and in the same respect, therefore contradiction. “There are no objective facts about subjective disagreement” (Bob Beddor, Subjective Disagreement. Nous, 2018, 25). https://t.iss.one/rtnews/54250

Once upon a time I had a highly respected teacher who was occasionally overheard giving opposite instructions to different students. When asked about it, the teacher explained that different students have unique deficiencies and the instruction given must be individually tailored to help them improve according to where they are in their development. Public health messaging seems similar insofar as different, often opposite meanings are encoded within the nominally same communications, and each person is expected to decode the information according to where they are in their development. It is possible that religious scriptures were also intended as multilayered teachings.

The people I respect the most (the kind of people who become my friends) are not necessarily the computationally smartest I happen to meet, but have some personal 'angle' on the events in the world. Their analysis may not be the deepest, they may at times be logically inconsistent, but their thinking is original, truly their own, not defensive in the face of disagreement but open and curious. In essence, they don’t jump to conclusions, they are not swayed by popular views, they operate within their capacities and without pretence, and yet they manage their world with inspiring confidence that shines even through tears. They have grace even in occasional failure. This kind of people are our hope. I sense from our conversations that many people of this kind are here, and this pleases me greatly.

The ideology of diversity and inclusion that extends to gender, race and disability seems like a cover for perpetuating exclusion on the basis of social class and wealth, by inexplicably omitting this most entrenched basis of prejudice in society.

Since WWII there is strong negative correlation between the development of military technology (firepower) and the rate of deaths in armed conflicts. https://www.statista.com/chart/10054/share-of-war-dead-over-time-since-world-war-two/ The following chart shows that the overall death rate from armed conflict was the same in the year 1400 as in 2000 (Log scale) : https://www3.nd.edu/~dhoward1/Rates%20of%20Death%20in%20War.pdf What we do to ourselves (diet, lifestyle, medication, drugs etc) is far more likely to kill us than an enemy in combat.

The central argument in the ICJ case against Israel is in part analogous to the strongest argument against vaccine mandates: no matter how great is the risk to the nation, it has no right to kill innocent people to mitigate that risk; the prohibition against the killing of a minority for the benefit of the majority is absolute. It is not a question of proportionality. https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/the-proportionality-principle-is

The theological 'problem of evil' has a simple answer: all attempts to eliminate evil are just another expression of evil (the trolley problem), purporting to be a lesser evil. The problem of evil can be reduced to the problem of irrationality, which cannot be 'fixed' by imperfectly rational beings but only evolved out of. This suggests that the problem of evil is being continuously solved, in the ongoing act of meaning-creation: the evolution of consciousness. Another way, evil is the default, natural state, the unconscious state, and consciousness is the antithesis of evil that evolves by reflecting on the problem of evil.

Notes on the ICJ case (Israel's defence). 1) The primary argument presented on behalf of Israel to justify the high death rate of civilians arising from its military operation is that the enemy uses the civilian population as human shields, and that killing human shields in any number is legally and morally permissible in order to defeat the enemy. The argument implies that the right to life of the human shields, even if they include the entire population of a nation, is secondary to the military objective of destroying the enemy combatants. It was further argued that to prevent Israel from killing human shields in any number that Israel deems necessary to accomplish its military objectives would create a disproportionate and irreparable advantage (legal loophole) for terrorists. This argument is fundamentally defective as it assumes a non-existent right to violate the right to life of non combatants. The right to life is not conditional on the test of proportionality but is absolute, and cannot be instrumentally violated. 2) The technical argument that jurisdiction is negated by insufficient communication between SA and Israel prior to initiating the proceedings also cannot stand, as it would allow any offending party to avoid prosecution for genocide by refusing to communicate and explicitly "dispute" the allegations. 3) The strongest argument in Israel's deference, which may succeed in its own right, is that the requested provisional measures are constructed in a way that implies a judgement on the merits (an implicit legal conclusion with respect to the charge of genocide). This is a clever technical defence. Nevertheless, at least some of the measures requested by SA can be interpreted by the court in a way that does not imply a judgement on the merits. 4) The strongest argument available to Israel was to show evidence that every documented incident of incitement to genocide or endorsement of genocide is being prosecuted. This could defeat the charge of genocide outright, but its agent glossed over this powerful argument, without addressing any specific cases, thus implying that the argument cannot be utilised in full, implying a permissive attitude of the state of Israel in regard to genocidal intent.

All ‘Trolley Problems’ are Wrong

A Trolley Problem is a kind of ethical dilemma where a person is asked to choose between saving several lives at the expense of fewer lives, or saving fewer lives at the expense of more lives. This kind of problems are based on several assumptions, including: 1) that the person making the decision has complete control of the situation, 2) the person making the decision can accurately predict the outcomes, 3) there are only two possible outcomes. All these assumptions are provably false, but a further assumption is the morally critical one: 4) the intention of the agent in question is artificially limited to a false dichotomy: allowing many deaths to occur vs. intentionally causing fewer deaths. This one point makes all trolley problems disigenious, a moral trap that is essentially trying to convince people to do what is morally wrong (kill an innocent human being for the sake of others, ie human sacrifice). The crucial alternative that the trolley problem ignores is that the moral agent can intend to save all humans in the trolleys. Moreover, it assumes that the moral agent must make a decision (that the decision is already a moral responsibility of the agent); it remains to be demonstrated that we have the moral responsibility to save anyone from anything that we have not caused ourselves (I call this view the ‘moral omnipotence fallacy’). If ‘moral omnipotence’ were true then surgeons should never play golf but remain at the hospital at all times, just in case they were needed to operate on some unfortunate victim of road trauma. In fact, they should work tirelessly just for food, water and a basic shelter. Ironically, the trolley problem is typically used by trauma doctors to convince others that the decisions they ‘had to make to save lives’ were right. One famous Australian doctor tried to use this kind of fallacious argument to convince me that vaccine mandates are not morally wrong, but all he did was implicitly admit that he actually killed someone in his care (by witholding essential medical care) in order to save someone younger. It was my impression that he expected me to sympathise with and be humbled by the difficulty of the moral choices that “real” doctors face, in the “real world”. I told him this ‘would be’ an intentional murder, ‘if’ the patient were already in his care, unless of course doctors have no duty of care whatsoever and can go home at any time, even in the middle of an operation... My overall experience is that medical doctors, even the most celebrated ones, are not very rational, or moral.

The Trolley Problem has a consistency problem

There is a runaway trolley speeding down the tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You have the capacity to pull a lever, which will redirect the trolley to a different set of tracks. There is only one person tied up on the side track. You have two options:

1. Do nothing, in which case the trolley will kill the five people on the main track.
2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

The silent premise of the trolley problem is that you have the moral obligation to save people from death, just because they are people. It follows that the obligation extends to all people, therefore you also have the obligation to save the person you would have to kill in order to save the others, therefore the choice entails a contradiction. The binary choice must be rejected as absurd.

The view that ‘vaccine mandates are morally wrong because they amount to killing some people for the benefit of others’ is logically incompatible with the view that ‘proportionate killing of civilians for the sake of national security is morally right’ (unless the person holding these views does not regard the killed civilians as human).