Anyway, setting aside the ethical concerns, it seems perfectly clear that "setting aside the ethical concerns" is *precisely* the problem.
It is what got us in to this nightmare, and it is what is keeping us in this nightmare.
Please stop pretending that "setting aside the ethical concerns" is anything but a verbal signal indicating one's unwillingness to take personal responsibility for one's actions.
@sakhavi @GeePawHill Among others, people who want to talk about some aspect of a thing that has ethical concerns other than the ethical concerns
(I'm not disputing that "setting aside the ethical concerns" can be abused, but it does have legitimate uses.)
@barbra @sakhavi @GeePawHill First a caveat: I've seen many cases where that kind of response comes from someone who is not actually open to being educated. I hope that's not the case here.
"Setting aside the ethical concerns of the pollution caused by internal combustion engines, they're not an economically efficient way to move people around."
or
"Setting aside the ethical concerns of the loss of privacy that would come from proving P=NP, it would be a huge boon to mathematical research."
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What does "setting aside ethical concerns" mean to you? It might be easy to clear this up by comparing our understandings of the phrase.
Your first example has historically been disproven. For all most a century, gasoline has been an economical way of getting from point a to point b, because setting aside the external costs (such as health effects of pollution) is "setting aside ethical concerns".
" Setting aside ethical concerns" is just an attempt to justify short-term short-sighted thinking, which leads to the tragedy of the commons.
We live in the real world, where "setting aside ethical concerns" always has negative consequences. That's a fact even your second proposed example demonstrates.
GeePawHill
Sasha Akhavi
David Zaslavsky
barbra