"Is there any good person in the world whose reputation would not be instantly and totally destroyed if they were filmed passing by someone who was torturing an animal without doing anything about it?"
The reader can imagine that I posted this question on Ask Reddit, and it didn't get deleted by automod, and no one could name someone whose reputation would survive this. If it's bad for me to be saying anything, I don't want to act like I'm trying to hide the fact that I'm saying something.
There is no agreement about whether it's bad for someone not to share this idea, mainly because no one is sharing it, and people never define what the majority does as 'bad'. When I created a moral standard, even I didn't say that not sharing this idea is 'bad': I just said that benefiting from associating with someone who doesn't share it is 'bad'. But if people did talk about this idea and agree that sharing it is good, and not sharing it is bad, or even that supporting its use (with the objective of ending war and so on) is good and not supporting it is bad, then this question about someone torturing an animal has immediate relevance.
I don't like to go into more detail even in a question, regarding what "torturing" is supposed to mean. But it's precisely because people can imagine "torturing" to mean doing something worse to an animal than someone would be able to get away with doing in public to a human, that the question makes people understand that ignoring the situation is morally unacceptable. Humans can also be treated poorly: someone screaming at their child, who is looking at the ground and crying etc., but humans still find reasons to treat other humans poorly, because punishment can deter behaviors seen as bad or dangerous. But humans can also receive protection if they report bullying, while animals cannot identify a perpetrator except in Black Mirror episodes.
It's been two weeks so I don't have to feel bad about saying something because of Greta posting on Instagram. Greta posted a Story made from https://www.instagram.com/armeniaexplores/reel/DXeG5goCHWp/. About social media, the same account also posted https://www.instagram.com/armeniaexplores/reel/DXeKEUlCAP x/ which is almost exactly the same except for the overlaid text, and it has just 11% of the Likes. I guess it shows, among other things, the importance of language: the videos both use mostly the same clips, with the same music, and no talking, but the significance changes completely because of a few words that only someone who knows English could read.
At 0:17, there is a short clip, less than one second, of a bunch of flags from many countries. And I thought, all of them have the same visual pattern. The US flag is different. If the US flag were to be shown in a group of other flags, the US flag would stand out visually. Maybe it's a non-trivial part of why people from the US consider themselves to be 'special'? Our flag visually invites comparison and conflict with other people, and if we don't attend events like this with other people due to not feeling similar, it just leads to more cultural separation as a positive feedback loop. (US states also have flags, which might be more similar visually to the flags of other nations, but most US state flags would not be recognized by people from other US states.)
Greta also posted a Story made from https://www.instagram.com/ajplus/reel/DXfYAQ3jJc5/. An unrelated video, also recently posted by ajplus: https://www.instagram.com/ajplus/reel/DXhQAMmDTQE/.
What would Japanese kids do if they had to take a detour to reach their school, with the most direct path being blocked by barbed wire? They would not protest in this way. Is it better to protest, than to not protest? Presumably people in the cultures who act a certain way think that acting that way is better.
Trump has this as his pinned tweet, from a day ago: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116455604892115486
It made me think of this post from https://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2003/08/ on 28 Aug 2003:
Listen to this little anecdote. One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen.
As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.
Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.
A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !!
My search for "site:riverbendblog.blogspot.com bridge cousin engineer" also turned up https://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/, where the first post, from 18 Jan 2006, lists damage from the war.
So I think it's great that Trump was able to save money with the Reflecting Pool, that was leaking 500k gallons of water per week before the first restoration in 2012.
People saying "just spend the $300 million on the pool", just like they said "just spend the $50 million to rebuild a bridge in Iraq": a few days ago, my younger relatives were watching videos that made them stupid and would make other people think my relatives are stupid. I could have forced them to stop, but I did not, despite my complaints about their poor reading ability. People being stupid, and therefore inefficient, creates more jobs, and therefore arguably a better outcome for society. I would prefer a society where being more efficient improves society — what this idea would do — but it is not the society we live in. Since watching the dumb videos made my relatives happier and was also better for society, I did not stop them.
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Update 24 Apr 2026, 15:39
I thought of a poll, which someone with the ability to make polls (I can't at the moment, except on traditional message boards) should make after making other polls like the one that I suggested that Greta make but can't remember at this moment:
"If you act in a stupid way and avoid activities that make you smarter, the world will be better off but you will be worse off. Do you act in a stupid way?"
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