Opening the purple box can never be morally justifiable.
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 2 votes and with the same amount of points on both sides...
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Imagine that you are given a purple box by a wizard. Attached to the box is a note that reads "If you open this box, ANYTHING could happen." Let us imagine that this statement is true, after all, a wizard gave it to you.
Assuming that opening the box could result in any outcome imaginable, can opening the box ever be morally justifiable?
My claim is that opening the box can never be morally justifiable.
So to win this debate, you must give me an example of a situation in which it would be morally justifiable to open the box.
Fun ethical thought experiment
Ultimately con began to lose ground with me with what he thought was a coup de grâce. That the box could potentially produce something named ‘moral justification,’ doesn’t make Ted morally justified when he risked everything for everyone without any consent other than his own.
A lot of the problem is engaging in semantics, instead of engaging with the thought experiment. While there were examples such as if you’re poor you should risk everything… Pro defended those with the simple fact of Ted knowing of the potential horrible outcomes for everyone. As for there could be a in case that isn’t named, it wasn’t named or even strongly implied to potentially exist.
The bomb analogy almost tipped it. It placed into my mind the hypothetical of a doomsday device which is ticking down; under those circumstances, it’s better to try anything than to do nothing. Leaving it with the low scale, doesn’t show me that the box is justified to use instead of just cutting a random wire on the bomb.
Pros case also could have been better. While I appreciate conciseness, it’s a gamble; even a couple more paragraphs would have clarified and therefore strengthened their case. Pro also should not have brought kindergarten into the debate, even while con embraced the ad hominems and got carried away with them.
PRO never properly established what moral justification even is. He says Ted is guilty of gambling with the universe, but CON retorts that when talking about probability there will always be cases where a good outcome is more likely, if the current state of the world is worse than more than 50% of the purple box outcomes. PRO could have tried to present the framework that potential negative outcomes must be weighed as more morally significant, but he did not as far as I can tell. He instead argues about consent, but he never provides a moral framework to properly establish the value of consent when calculating moral justification. All PRO does is call Ted selfish and stupid, and says other people might not want him to open the box. CON counters that everyone is going to enjoy the potentially positive outcomes, and there is no reason to believe that Ted specifically is going to benefit, so you cannot really call him selfish.
"The bomb is set to go off after some time. Cutting a wire could speed it up possibly unimaginably so making what was perceived as the worse situation anybody could come in contact with, cutting one wire could make it even more worse. But cutting a wire could also rid the bomb going off altogether." This is the best argument CON could have made. If everyone is going to get blown to bits in nuclear annihalation, then Ted opening the purple box could be seen as morally justified, regardless of his inability to ask every single person for consent.
But I would probably have voted in favor of PRO if he provided a robust ethical framework and used that to argue his case, rather than simply appealing to our emotions as voters.
"But I would probably have voted in favor of PRO if he provided a robust ethical framework and used that to argue his case, rather than simply appealing to our emotions as voters."
Vote PRO if you have empathy and/or emotions.
Vote CON if you are a cold blooded psychopath who needs an ethical framework to decide right from wrong.
Good Game
A: What if the suffering being experienced is already infinite? Ex: an infinite amount of people in an infinite amount of suffering.
B: What if opening the box made that suffering infinitely worse in another way? Ex: an infinite amount of people in an infinite amount of suffering for an infinite amount of time.
A: What if the suffering being experienced is already infinite, in an infinite number of ways? Then could you use the box?
B: What if opening the box made the suffering infinite, in an infinite number of ways. And then somehow did that in multiple ways?
Think of 2 parallel planes (math term): Each plane can fit an infinite amount of infinitely long lines.
A: What if the suffering was infinite, in an infinite number of ways. And that was somehow in an infinite number of ways? Then could you use the box?
It never ends. LOL
This sounds like, "What if I add infinity by 1?"
Hell is not contingent on any specific description. I define hell as the worst thing possible, such that if it was possible to make it worse, it would automatically take on the meaning of that new state.
Responding to Benjamin's comment:
Well what if I took that hell, and I made it worse. Do you really think that there is a limit to human suffering?
What if an infinite people are in the worst hell logically possible. In that case, there is no outcome of the purple box that can result in a net negative.