RE: Given a chance would you kill baby Hitler?
November 16, 2015 at 5:46 am
(This post was last modified: November 16, 2015 at 5:48 am by Edwardo Piet.)
(November 15, 2015 at 9:22 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: I think the whole question revolves around what rules apply for the hypothetical time travel. Is the butterfly effect in play or does the timeline have some kind of inertia? What happens to the previous timeline?
Well it involves 3 things:
1. What laws of hypothetical time travel are we talking about.
2. Regardless of those laws would Hitler not being around actually prevent the war or would someone just as bad take his place and the war be equally horrific?
3. Regardless of whether a baby shall grow up to be Hitler, is it ever really right to kill a baby?
My answer to 1: It's pointless to speculate.
My answer to 2: I'm not sure, I'm pretty sure shit is going to be bad either way, but it's not worth killing an innocent person (I.e. a baby) even if Hitler being killed as baby would have prevented the war happening or being as bad.
My answer to 3: No it's never justified. If it's a choice between a painful death and a painless death obviously the latter is preferable but a baby dying in pain isn't worth it regardless of how many others dying in pain may be saved. It's too complicated to aggregate the utilitarian ethics of the matter and it would be playing God to do so. The kind of world I want to live in is not one where people go around killing people on a whim because they think it will save many others. That is not a civilized and just society and that is not moral, ethical, or wise.
