Moral rules are not things to be blindly followed, but rather are useful guidelines to avoid screwing things up. They are “the manual,” they are “standard operating procedure,” they are there for a reason and you can deviate from them, sure, but you’d better have a damn good reason, or you can expect it to blow up in your face.

Virtually everyone seems to have this all twisted up. On the one hand, you have people who always try to follow SOP, even if there’s good reason to deviate from it. On the other hand, you have people who see that there are situations where SOP doesn’t apply, so they just ignore it altogether. Both of these approaches are foolish and lead to making mistakes.

The trolley problem is a thought experiment specifically designed to be an exception to the otherwise reasonable SOP of “Don’t kill innocents.” But you don’t make a rule from the exception. You don’t go around treating, “The ends justify the means,” or “It doesn’t matter how many people I have to sacrifice in persuit of the greater good,” as your new SOP, just because you saw a thought experiment where the old SOP doesn’t apply.

The whole reason moral guidelines are necessary is because the mind if fallible and prone to making mistakes. Our emotions, or our desire to fit a particular identity, may get in the way of good decision making. For example, the use of torture post-9/11 was driven by hatred, a desire for revenge and domination, and a desire to embody the image of the Jack Bauer antihero, willing to do whatever it takes to keep people safe. I’ve read reports of NSA torturers walking out of torture sessions while visibly erect. It was driven by, well, evil. This “ends justifies the means” mental framework makes it all to easy for hate or other emotions to hijack reason. Of course, in reality, this torture never produced any useful information, and in at least one case caused a previously cooperative informant to clam up.

Likewise, if a problem can be pushed out of sight and out of mind, it can easily be ignored or rationalized away. This is the case with liberals and the Palestinian genocide. When something is far away, when it affects people who I don’t know, then psychologically it becomes much easier to write off anything that happens - even moreso if you are operating on the framework of, “Any cost to achieve my aims.” But these situations are where moral guidelines are more important than ever. It is fundamentally unacceptable to act on willful ignorance of the suffering caused by one’s actions, to say, “This makes me feel guilty so I just won’t look at it or think about it.” This is another way in which one’s mind can compromise their reason and better judgement.

That’s also what’s at play, at least imo, when people continue to eat meat despite knowing about the cruelty involved in that industry. When we see someone beat a dog, we are horrified, we are outraged, we are moved to act to stop it - because our empathy extends to the pain the dog feels. But cows and pigs can feel pain just as a dog can, which means that rationally, we should be equally horrified at the conditions those animals are kept in. But those practices are always kept out of sight and out of mind, and the mind has powerful forces, like the force of habit, that are capable of compromising reason and good judgement.

When people try to convince me of things (especially things like torture or genocide) based on them being “the lesser evil,” to say it goes against SOP is an understatement. It’s like asking me to dance a waltz on the raised forks of a forklift. Now, maybe some set of circumstances exists in which standing on the raised forks of a forklift makes sense, like maybe it’s the only way to escape a fire. But I’m never going to accept that this is just a normal or generally acceptable way of doing things.

The rules are there for a reason and you shouldn’t deviate from them without a very good reason and the majority of the time that people think they have a good reason they are wrong.

It’s a good concept but I’m more fond of the concept of sound. It comes down to personal preference.

The concept of the “lesser evil” operates as a manipulative technique, much like the neoliberal slogan “there is no alternative” (TINA). In both cases, the spectrum of alternatives is artificially narrowed to create the illusion of fewer choices than actually exist. For example, while the United States has roughly fifteen multi-state political parties, the lesser evil strategy deliberately implies there are only two.

There is no such thing as good or evil. There’s only the things that make us feel good and things that do not. For some people, the things that make them feel good are also things that make others feel good; but there’s a lot of people who only feel good by causing others to feel bad.

The only thing that matters is balancing what makes you feel better with the things that make the people you rely on feel better.

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.

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.

I think it’s like the trolley problem: a trolley (like a train) is barreling down the tracks to a fork in the tracks. You have a lever that will divert the train. Tied to the tracks dead ahead are five innocent people who will all certainly die if you don’t throw the lever. However, one innocent person is tied to the tracks that you would divert the trolley to. Assume the trolley has no passengers and all five (or the one) will certainly be killed by the trolley.

The dilemma here is that by doing nothing, you could say you have nothing to do with the five people dying. You didn’t put them there. You can blame the person who did put them there, but by doing nothing, you can say you have no blood on your hands. Or you can pull the lever, but then the blood of the one person is absolutely on your hands, but you can say you saved the other five.

Diverting the trolley is the lesser of two evils. But is it the right call? Depends on the situation.

Yes, of course. That always assumes a lack of good choice (i.e. no choice also being a bad option).

I could do it once. When the “lesser evil” decides their whole strategy is being the lesser evil and blackmail me with “if you don’t vote us the big evil will come” then I grow tired and issue a big fuck you to the “lesser evil”.

Obviously true? In real life I’ve found it’s often worth doing a bit of thinking / effort to find a third option though. Not always possible though - like when voting - though I don’t think picking the least worst (imho) option when it comes to political representation is immoral

It’s rarely true.

You can aim to do something good, with a risk of something bad happening (e.g. as another poster said, rolling the dice on surgery to alleviate suffering at the risk of the patient dying)

…or you can do evil.

The “lesser of two evils” is just used as justification for something that can’t be morally justified otherwise.

It’s particularly sensitive to false dichotomies, and used to justify immoral behavior.

It’s far more effective to argue from the veil of ignorance.

Depends on the context, but almost always a strawman imo.

Evil is simpler and easier to pull off than good (because you don’t have to value everyone in your equation), so “reasonable” compromises with evil compounded enough times leads to some pretty evil outcomes.

False dichotomy.

Also, read Witcher. It have like 9 books about it.

There is always the option to not pick.