Terry Pratchett once wrote that a good writer should always be reading. This statement could be analyzed and supported with an argument: if fiction is about presenting and solving problems, then the problems should be neither too easy, too hard, nor irrelevant to what people care about.
I didn't see this statement about reading in https://www.lspace.org/books/pqf/alt-fan-pratchett.html, but I will include three random quotes from that page:
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
There are no inconsistencies in the Discworld books; occasionally, however, there are alternate pasts.
One day I'll be dead and THEN you'll all be sorry.
So: I overheard a line from a movie, a male soldier saying he would do anything to get back to a female character, with him repeating the word "anything" for emphasis. I immediately thought, "would he kill people?" And many people would. Many people who have been in wars talk about how they killed someone and later felt bad about it.
It's a bit like the red and blue buttons question, on the topic of which I thought of two more variations:
red blue button and risky is labeled good, but as you are about to press a button, you are stopped and informed the buttons were mislabeled for you by accident, and everyone else got buttons where risky was labeled evil
red blue button as blender, but 'red button' is to jump into a giant blender that will not turn on as it's broken due to an internal fault.
But I think that a soldier can morally kill others as long as the soldier is themselves willing to die; the commentary from Book of Five Rings that I quoted before.
From there, I thought about how I never learned if I would kill someone who was an 'enemy'. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have if the only one they were threatening Noting that I was prepared to attack the person who tried to mug me, I will say that I think it would have been better if I died as a US soldier from being shot by someone in Iraq, than if I had killed someone fighting against the US there (whether they were Iraqi or a foreigner who came to Iraq to fight).
Many people are willing to think positively of someone who will risk their life, with no benefit to themselves for doing it: people who press the blue button. But if it were a more complex (and realistic) situation, where it wasn't just me being threatened, but also other people on my 'team', then more people would be willing to condemn me if I did not press the trigger when my weapon was aimed at an enemy.
So even if I had the intention of being 'good', there was a slight possibility when I signed up for the military that I could end up in a situation where the 'good' action was unclear. And also a slight possibility that the intention of being 'good' could result in a situation where it would clearly be worse for me (if an enemy and I were pointing weapons at each other).
Why did I act this way? To me, there is an obvious explanation. It lowered my value: it made me someone with a lower chance of survival than someone who would kill without hesitation (while still following the applicable rules of engagement, which all soldiers are required to memorize); note cases like the Iraqi female who, around January 2009, approached US forces on a road in Baghdad, shouting at them and causing the vehicle to back up until the vehicle's gunner was ordered to fire a single shot at her, at which point the Iraqi police on the scene picked her up and took her to a hospital.
And a lower value was how I justified telling Mei that I l*ved her, even if it meant Elyse could never be in a relationship with me. It made it possible for me to reason that Elyse could find someone better than me, because there was at least one obvious way (in addition to all the other possible ways, like appearance) that someone could be better than me.
The thinking that I was lower value because it's possible I would have let an Iraqi kill me as a soldier is subjective: it's possible other people would disagree. The point is that it was a flaw that I chose, and people who are in a similar position might also choose a flaw. The specifics might be hard to predict.
Possible poll about the prevalence of intentional flaws:
"A genie offers to change anything about you that another person could possibly consider a flaw, making you perfect (without adding capabilities like protein synthesis). Do you accept, or transfer the choice to a random person of the same gender with about the same attractiveness as you, who can also refuse it? This is a morally neutral choice."
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Wrote the above about an hour ago and did not publish it. It made me think of the plan that I never carried out: "travel to Pakistan and get a group to announce that they had me, a US citizen, in captivity and would execute me if people did not talk about this idea."
I'm not sure exactly when I had this plan. I had money from the second round of Covid stimulus benefits in the US (I never cashed my check from the first round), but by that point my passport was expired.
So, if I thought of this plan before my passport expired, I would have needed money, which I would have gotten from my oldest brother.
Most people would probably say it's a plan with a low chance of success. They would also call it crazy for another reason: the personal risk involved. Even people with a more accurate understanding might say it would have a low chance of success. It would depend on some group understanding and caring about this idea, and me being able to find them, in a country I did not know that used languages I don't understand.
But it could have led to this idea being used ~8 years ago. If this idea saves 300k people from suicide per year, that's over 2 million people.
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