It’s a manipulative fallacy. Humanity has the total ability to control its destiny within what’s physically possible. People presenting two options and demanding a choice of one discount every possibly out of an infinite set of possibilities except those two.
See: horse image
Too often this option is presented by people who are deliberately manipulating you and causing you to think that you only have the two choices which each benefit them and neither you. Always consider who is offering this choice and why. The true lesser evil here is whatever you have to do to get out of the situation where this choice is being presented to you.
Its a large component of my morality. Being basically a subcomponent of ethic of least harm. I mean armchair idealized morality is great but this life don’t always give you a good option.
Depends how evil the lesser evil is. There is a point where even the less bad choice is so bad I refuse to choose at all, even if it means a worse outcome overall.
In politics for example I might vote for a party close to the centre, despite being far left myself, if it is the only tactically sound choice to prevent a fascist from being elected, but I wouldn’t vote for a fascist to prevent an even worse fascist.
But why? If you had the choice of getting stabbed with a pin or stabbed with a knife why would you ever abstain or not choose the pin? It just doesn’t make sense.
Your example doesn’t fit since it doesn’t involve doing something myself (as opposed to something happening to me) and there is no morality involved the choices.
The reason I wouldn’t do something evil to try to prevent something even more evil, is because I don’t believe in doing evil things, even with good intentions. Sometimes I think it’s better to just let the trolley do its thing, rather than getting involved, if there are no good choices.
Seem fairly sound and self evident. Obviously there can be disagreements on judgement, but I can’t think of an scenario where the greater evil should not be opposed.
pick the guy who is easier to fight
What’s to think about? You going to choose the GREATER evil?
Depends on your meta-ethical framework. If you’re a consequentialist, then you should always choose the option that leads to less evil being done. Same if you’re a utilitarian.
If you hold to a Kantian value-based framework, like the action itself holds the primary moral goodness or evil in its own nature, then choose the action that itself is less evil.
There are many other frameworks. It also depends on what you think happens in the case of something like voting. Some people see participation in any sense as a sort of tacit agreement or endorsement of the system as a whole. So by casting any vote, even one of protest, you are legitimizing the system as a whole.
Others see voting as a mere means to an end, and thus, is justified if the outcome is better than not voting would be. Some see it as purely neutral, like a tool that can be used for good or bad.
Still, others see it as an inherently good thing, and view abstaining from the act of voting as a moral wrong, because it is a willing act of self-sabotage of the moral interests of the greater good, or sometimes as a violation of the social contract.
There are many other positions and considerations. Basically…it’s complicated.
Not choosing is also a choice. It may or may not be the right or wrong choice.
Do not compare evils, lest you be tempted to cleave with the least of them!
–Victor Saltzpyre
(A raw line probably inspired by somebody else lol)
It’s always odd to me when words develop parallel but distinct meanings based on context. Like, I know “to cleave to” something is to attach to it, but it trips me up (esp. in a Warhammer context where Saltzpyre would be hanging out) since I default to “he was cleaved in twain”.
As with most other English oddities, I assume this is holdover from my ancestors treating other languages like swap meets.
God I love contronyms. Strike is also a fun one because it means to hit and also to miss.
Dust is the best one: to cover in dust (like sugar on a pastry) or to remove dust from (like a bookshelf).
Also a noun.
I mean, if you truly have no other choice, what else can you do? Can it even be considered evil at that point or just “still painful”? If I have to chop off my/someone’s gangrenous leg to ensure survival, is that evil or just, you know, not ideal? It’s important not to get too lost in semantics…
There are always more choices.
It’s a great way to lose an election.
It’s highly context dependent.
In medicine, you face this question all the time. Will a surgery do more harm than good. Can I just leave that person suffering, or should I roll the dice with this surgery? It’s a proper dilemma to ponder. How about this medication that improves the patient’s quality of life in one area, but causes some side effects that are less horrifying than the underlying condition. Sounds like a win, but is it really?
In various technical contexts, you often find yourself comparing two bad options and pick the one that is “less bad”. Neither of them are evil, good, great or even acceptable. They’re both bad, and you have to pick one so that the machine can work for a while longer until you get the real spare parts and fix it properly. For example, you may end up running a water pump at lower speed for the time being. It wears down the bearing, moves less water, consumes too much energy etc, but it’s still better than shutting the pump down for two weeks.
In various technical contexts
You probably do this all the time without thinking much about it. For example, updating mains-powered devices without UPS. There’s a chance the power goes out and something gets screwed up.
Yeah, but depending on where you live that would be a freak accident and not something worth considering. In my entire life I have never experienced a mains power outage, it’s not really a thing in Germany
Yeah, where I live it happens like once every two-three years, usually during winter storms so it’s easy to avoid doing it then.
Yeah. Roll the dice, hope for the best and all that. If power goes out, you could be looking at several days of troubleshooting, but it is unlikely to happen.
On the other hand, you could get that UPS, but that’s going to take time, and the server really needs those security patches today. Are you going to roll that dice instead and hope nobody tries to exploit a new vulnerability discovered this morning?
Either way, it’s pretty bad.
“lesser risk” is a lot different than “lesser evil”
so is “higher cost”
yeah I was unimpressed with those examples. usually its something where you have no real choice.
In medicine you chose the best option not the lesser evil
The way I see it, that’s just different wording for the same thing. More patient friendly, for sure.
If there really are only harmful options, for sure choose the least harm. But you have to make sure that you’re not ignoring an option which involves no harm.
The problem really is when people assume there’s only two choices. If you dont like the choices, be creative and come up with something else.
I mean for most things there are almost unlimited choices. One can go mad in response to something. So just want to add to not assume there are only two effective choices and be creative to look for another possible effective choice. I mean if you find a new choice to avoid a choice that you can see will have the same result of the first choice then making the new choice is effectively the same as the other choice.
I’d caveat that if you didnt know the new choice would result in the same thing as the first choice, you still gained new knowledge by trying it out. We also can’t know all the answers all the time.
totally agree.
If you are in this position, it helps to remember a great suits quote:
You need a bigger gun
—Harvey Specter
