Asklemmy

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.

gotta call their bluff eventually. otherwise you just end up with the "lesser evil" still being genocide.

It's a farce.

There are never only two choices. It is impossible to actually construct a real world situation where in there are only two choices. Even in an elementary school, given a test with only on question on it and it only has two answers, you can eat the test, scribble on it, punch the computer screen, walk out, etc.

Even in prison with guards pointing guns at you and putting you in a position to do either A or B you have options.

However, the concept of lesser evil is a shallow abstraction of the real world experience of pragmatism. Amongst all of your options, what course of action leads to the most desirable outcomes?

This is a real thing. We do it all the time. People in positions of grave responsibility have to do it with consequences and constraints that are absolutely gutting. Let's say the war has already started, well, now you have to make decisions about how to avoid losing the most strategically important objectives, even if that means people dying. In fact, the strategies employed in war force decision makers into these sorts of choices as a matter of course - an opponent knows you don't want to make certain sacrifices and will therefore create pressures that trade off those sacrifices with strategic objectives. Sometimes it's not even that they believe you'll give up the strategic objectives but the delay you have when choosing will give them an advantage, or the emotional and psychological toll of being put in such situations repeatedly over a long campaign can create substantial advantages.

Lesser evil is rhetorical sophistry or mildly useful thought experiments when exploring the consequences of ethical frameworks in academia.

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.

Its usually used by more evil evildoers trying to paint themselves as less evil than their (real or made up) opposition, while advocating for evil. I think its a desparation move by villains who got found out.

The choice is rarely actually binary.

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".

It's often used misleadingly. For example, in an election in a de facto two-party system, it's often said that you should vote for 'the lesser evil', but this presumes that your vote will decide the result of the election, which it clearly won't. Thinking e.g. "the Dems winning would be the lesser evil compared to the Republicans winning, and I'm voting third party (or spoiling or even abstaining)" is therefore entirely coherent imho.

I would like to see it used more to describe political situations outside of the West tbh. When we talk about x regime, it should always be 'compared to what'. But of course, no-one cares about 'lesser evils' in this context, which I think says a lot.

Back in the day, ex-slave Frederick Douglas had to choose between supporting a Presidential candidate who was for immediate abolition of slavery or helping a wishy-washy liberal who wouldn't come out in favor of abolition. Douglas chose to support the liberal because Douglas thought the liberal had a better chance of winning the election. Douglas had to weight the odds and decided that it was better to have a President who might listen to the abolition cause than it was to be 'moral' and lose the election.

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.

Thats how it is in our grayscale world

I think it's usually used to create a false dichotomy so that stockholm syndrome victims can feel good about supporting their abusers.

I use it as an excuse to view the average idiot for what they are. A slow loss is still a loss, but stupid people have convinced themselves that it's a win. I'm glad I'm not like them.

A friend of mine puts it this way: "I don't vote for who's turn it is to lead the KKK either."

It's a great way to lose an election.

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.

When it comes to politics, it's dangerous thinking that got us in this hellhole in the first place. It proved to anyone getting into politics that you can be a massive shit stain, but just be a slightly smaller shit stain than your opponent and people will support you to no end. Alternatively you can be the exact same level of shit stain as your opponent, but say things in a nicer way or just not at all and get the same results.

I personally have refused to accept this outcome since the only thing it leads us to is a slower death. I'd rather put my time and effort into supporting those that keep us alive even if most refuse to support that decision and call it idiotic.

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.

False dichotomy.

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

There is always the option to not pick.

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.

i just don't vote won't catch ME endorsing 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

I think of it as the food I must eat.

I am to hunger and I am to eat, I am to end something's being in order for me to be.

Best I can do is reduce the damage I induce. Eat just enough and waste little. Regardless I did an evil and now that something is no more.

I must have reverence for the harm I induce. To apply this into politics, harm will always happen - best you can do is fixate on the interests that are dire and do your part to reduce the harm in other avenues. The world is so interconnected, that almost every action has a negative - we are often just oblivious for we can only see our part.

Not choosing is also a choice. It may or may not be the right or wrong choice.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

Choosing the lesser evil is the cornerstone of our great democracies!

I was in a discussion a couple months ago with someone on here who told me "you have to vote for the lesser of two nazis." That wasn't hyperbole. We were literally discussing how you could vote in election where the two options were Nazis. Something about Elon musk's new party I think I forget. But the guy thought that if there's two Nazis running the responsible thing to do is to vote for the one you think is less bad. Which I don't know how you make that decision but okay. By the way that discussions seemed a little more absurd a few months ago now it seems downright prescient.

That discussion kind of perfectly encapsulates my feelings on the subject of voting for the lesser of two evils. Now I get the Strategic reasoning of voting for the lesser of two evils. I get the logic. But my feeling is it always does eventually end in what we were talking about. Voting for the lesser of two evils eventually is going to get you the point where you're voting for a literal Nazi. That's where the road leads.

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, always.

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