Topic: Right to endanger? - page 5. (Read 6743 times)

Per unit time, yes. But the time you spend to travel a given distance goes down. The longer you spend on a road, the higher your chances that some drunk will plow into you.

I'm trying to provoke the criteria and limits to which endangering is a low risk and unintended consequence of behavior and where it becomes a situation where self defense is justified

Can you avoid an accident, by, for instance, driving defensively? Has the other vehicle made it clear that the driver's intention is to hit you? Would, in other words, a crash between your two cars actually be an accident, or a malicious act of destruction?

I like that explanation

The way I read it, the self in self-defense refers to any innocent human being, not just 'yourself', as much as the auto in autopsy doesn't refer to a medical examiner performing his/her own post-mortem examination after becoming a zombie or posessing someone else's body to figure out their own cause(s) of death. The 'auto' refers to examination of a human being, and a necropsy is of animals.

Then it's not OK to use violence to defend your family.

Then it's not OK to use violence to defend your family.

The only acceptable use of violence is self defense.

Does this include having rockets in your car and if someone driving like a maniac you can blast them 200ft behind you before they come up close enough to cause an accident with you

Even if we are safer because of a law, the law presents several problems because of its nature.  A law is essentially a tool one group (government agents) use to leverage their socially-acceptable tendency to threaten people into exhibiting or avoiding certain behaviors.  The social acceptability of such coercion is the root of the problem.  When this tool (the law) makes things better, society generally uses it to justify the coercion.  Once justified, that coercion slowly but surely turns into tyranny.  When the law makes things worse, well, obviously that's undesirable.

Besides justifying coercion (when a law actually helps), laws also replace reason with fear.  Rather than driving slower because they want to be safe from automobile accidents, people will driver slower because they're afraid of getting caught speeding.  This seems harmless on the face of it, but you end up with tremendous waste and suffering when people operate from fear instead of reason.  Fear leads to "fight or flight", a dilemma in which there is no "relax and enjoy life" or "talk it out" or anything remotely similar to the kinds of human behavior that bring joy to our existence.

There are many philosophical treats for those who brave enough to explore anarchy with an open mind.  Perhaps a tantalizing tip of the ice berg is the fact that if you feel someone is endangering you by driving too fast (or in any other way), it makes sense for you to try to get them to change their behavior.  It makes sense, that is, if you do it through education and persuasion, or even community support if the speeder is sensitive to the judgement of others.  It makes a lot less sense when you rely on guns, fines, jails, and the theft that most people call "taxation".  When you do it that way, it has horrible long term effects.

Wow OK. I must have a problem with making myself clear. The question had nothing to do with anarchism or airplanes

Let me rephrase: do I have the right to endanger your life? Is it only morally wrong if you actually get hurt?

Certainly you have the right to endanger people to some extent -- you couldn't do anything if you couldn't endanger people at all. But legal systems have to draw the line somewhere and that certainly seems over the line to me.

The only acceptable use of violence is self defense.

I completely agree; perhaps we've read the same book on the subject. However I challenge you to come up with a general yet universally applicable moral rule.

I completely agree; perhaps we've read the same book on the subject. However I challenge you to come up with a general yet universally applicable moral rule.

In general, the more general a rule, the more edge cases and gray areas there are.

Killing is wrong
Killing is wrong except in self defense
Killing its wrong except in self defense, the defense of other people, or in assisted suicide
Killing its wrong except in self defense, the defense of other people, or in assisted suicide, or when there is no hope for the person to awaken from their coma

Subjective personal preferences that people dress up as morality in order to bully and control people are not absolute.

I am suggesting that is there is a posted Speed Limit and your exceeding it, you are in fact breaking the law of that locality.