October 5th, 2021
5 Oct 2021 · page 1083 of 1306
Arrive for the information gathering, stay for the emotional support.
Cast: Lei Feng, Thea Pryce
Comments (60)
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Greatest amount of good? That would be to keep working on the cheap, clean mass transport system, rather than pursuing your own selfish interests.
Or working on a cheap, clean source of power.
same energy
If only Fatima had trained to be a HGV driver...
Had a wild image of a row of truck drivers in tutus en pointe
I'm pretty sure that a point-to-point transit system based on Thea's technology would solve global warming.
Except they weren't using point to point instantaneous transport in 2013 any more than the skies were full of Cunningham Flying Boats in 1833, which suggests to me there's a fundamental flaw in both technologies that means they aren't suitable for routine use. And I get a horrible feeling we'll find out what the problem with the Confidence Engine is very soon.
Would you say that you're starting to lose confidence in it?
To suddenly introduce the instantaneous transport of goods and people? There would be CHOAS!
whoops, worst kind of typo is one you did in all caps
gives the PPHoH a little sign that says CHOAS and sends it to protest somewhere
Probably out front of the Malform Office, because humor.
The term is 'disruptive technology'. :-)
Ah... [utilitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism"). Not the worst moral philosophy, but it's definitely got a rocky history as applied by fictional characters.
It sort of sounds like negative utilitarianism is a better bet than just straight utilitarianism due to some complications with application. It is a lot easier to figure out what does the least amount of harm over figuring out what does the most amount of good. You could still get into issues such as do you frame an innocent person who everyone thinks did a major crime or not and have the mob riot and kill people. Also since different cultures have different ideas of what is good and different people have a different idea of what makes them happy, minimizing pain just seems easier to me. There can be actions where doing something causes people pleasure while hurting a few people but choosing the other option keeps things at the status quo (rather than inducing pleasure or pain in the main group of people) while not hurting the few. In utilitarianism it sounds like the pleasure of many out-ways the pain of the few, while negative utilitarianism seems to be the reverse.
In general, I think that there are so many different situations to encounter that it makes it basically impossible to just use one philosophy for everything. It would be like using bleach to remove stains on everything, wearing the same type of clothes no matter the weather, or using the same type of cleaner no matter what you are washing. It just doesn't work, like you can't use drain cleaner to wash your face or hair.
If you can know that they are innocent, then so can the people. Generally speaking, if your people is prone to rioting, you've already been messing stuff up for a long time.
I think that the original example was having racism being a factor. Just because you found out that the suspect is innocent doesn't mean that the general public already knows it, and it can be hard to convince them otherwise if they already have it in their head that the person is guilty and there aren't any other suspects. It isn't that hard to get a mob to believe that there is a cover-up or conspiracy going on.
The problem with utilitarianism is you never know beforehand what the right thing to do is. Utilitarianism can only judge outcomes; until the outcome has... uh... come, all you can do is follow your best estimate. That which is intended to be moral may turn out to be immoral. I jump in to save you from drowning, but everything goes wrong and we both drown. I was trying to be moral, but I wasn't.
Makes sense. I would say that the intention and best guess would work then, except intentions are only known to the person who has them and the rest of us just has to go by what they say and their actions to get a good guess at it. With the drowning, I would say common sense would sort of apply too, as in are you trying to save someone from drowning without knowing how to swim, without knowing how to save someone from drowning or when the conditions are so bad that it is basically impossible? If you know how to swim, know how to save someone from drowning and the conditions aren't bad, but something still unfortunately happens, then I don't really find it at fault. The purpose was to not do any harm. Also where it comes from you accepting those conditions and still deciding to put yourself in harms way vs forcing someone else to put themselves in harms way, I think those play differently. Like the difference between having someone consent to be a part of a medical study that has the possibility to save lives vs being put in unaware in a study that has the possibility to save lives.
Ominous
Alright alright alright, what terrible, horrible, awful thing is Thea about to do? Place your bets, place your bets!
Skuttling the boat so the information about the fourth anchor doesn't get out?
Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Torture a child to make life perfect for everyone else?
Perfection as a concept is nonsense.
Yes. That's the nit to pick in my comment, obviously.
Either that, or walk away from Omelas!
FOR THE GREATER GOOD!
The greater good!
[https://www.youtube.com/wat...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u8vd_YNbTw "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u8vd_YNbTw")
Shut it!!
Take over the new anchor for herself and cut daddy out of the prize.
Try to knock Vee and Lei overboard?
Betting on atonal music
Wow, that wasn't incredibly vague at all!
Uhm Lei? I think you missed out that Thea didn't specify greatest amount of good for whom
Also aiming to do the greatest amount of good tends to amount to the greatest mistake made. Or to put it simply: I've got a sinking feeling about this
I think we're about to get a sinking boat about this.
Hopefully Verity & Lei will come up with an exsaillent plan to safe everyone
(Ouch, that pun was bad even for me)
Thea, has that paint had time to dry?
And how much would smearing it contribute to world-wide utility?
It would be a nice plot twist if, after all this, Thea really does turn out to be a perfectly nice friendly person with no ulterior motives.
Surely nothing bad can come of this.
Panel 3: Cutest "being determined" face ever! :-D
Pin pulled. Time to see if this is the good kind of grenade.
When the pin is out, Mr Grenade is not your friend.
In Soviet Russia, grenade explode YOU.
That's how it works everywhere else, too.
Yes, that's the... exasperated sigh
Why do I feel like this is going to come bite them in the arse?
Now that Harry and Sid are officially an item, this story is all about Verity and Lei meeting their girlfriends.
Most excellent!
Thea reminds me a lot of myself, both in looks and in behavior/personality. On the one hand, that's a fun coincidence--she even shares my hobby of watercolor painting! On the other hand, oh no...because if I marched off with a look of determination like that, it would probably be to do something ill-advised without consulting anyone, because Discussing Plans with Other People is Hard, and I can probably sort it out myself, right...?
This, however, seems like a higher-stakes situation than trying to dig a pit kiln in the backyard, or buying a large chair at an antique store without any way of getting it home.
Did Lei just encourage Thea to commit patricide?
Alas, good is a contextual beast. Lets see where this goes...
Oh god. She's about to pull a Moral Orel, isn't she?
Lei. It's a problem.
I love how you did the sea sunrise, it looks so real to life!
You know, the more I look at the last few pages the more I wonder if they're.. Actually talking about the same thing. They start off talking about art and entertainment, then Thea expresses that her father wants her to focus on things she doesn't really want to focus on and Lei gives the very general advice of 'you do you' and even on the last page with a mention of guilt, there's no direct mention of the subject.
Like, how sure are we that Thea isn't going to show up at breakfast declaring that she's going to go into theater painting backdrops for her new magician girlfriend? Or that yes, she has decided that she really isn't into boys at all, papa?
It looks like this conversation is gonna have more lasting consequences than Lei ever envisionned
Well, that's not at all ominous! Good talk, Lei!