TLDR If you care about the Palestinians then vote for Harris because her being president is useful for reaching a ceasefire.

The other post about this topic got locked as I was typing a reply. I feel like my comment is relevant to this discussion so I would like to leave it here. I would think this reply, the original comment, and this post are tightly related and are all about the same thing.

One thing I’ve learned this election cycle is how few people have any knowledge of utilitarianism. Genocide is better than genocide+1. Not acting is a moral choice, and frequently a cowardly one.

There is utilitarianism the ethical philosophy and there is utility. Utilitarianism is still a form a moral reasoning as it subjectively elevates the maximization of happiness and well-being. And what constitutes happiness and well-being is not universal. Utility is a method of analysis used to determine how effectively a stated action advances a stated goal. Utility relies on empirical evidence, observation and math, and is goal agnostic.

For many people on Lemmy, their goals are probably roughly summarized by wanting to end Israel's genocide, Palestinian statehood, and general prosperity for the Palestinian people. Harris has stated multiple times that she wants a ceasefire. Trump has stated he thinks Israel needs to be allowed to finish what they started. Trump has also stated he's going to be a dictator on day one and that his followers are never going to have to vote again.

Moral reasoning that is consistent with our goals paralyzes us in this case. Voting for a candidate whose administration oversaw and contributed to a genocide of Palestinians is subjectively immoral. Voting for a candidate who is threatening to complete a genocide of Palestinians is subjectively immoral. Not voting or voting third party when the candidate threatening to complete a genocide of Palestinians is favored by the electoral college in a FPTP system is subjectively immoral. We can subjectively state one of these options to be the lesser evil, but we have no empirical way to measure evil. Thus in theory, there is no way to form a consensus with subjective moral reasoning alone.

For people whose goal is to support the Palestinian people, it is useful to elect Harris, because someone in power who wants a ceasefire is a useful step to actually getting a ceasefire. Where as Trump will allow Israel to complete it's genocide and end our democracy. This would allow Israel to continue it's genocide indefinitely without US citizens ever being able to influence US foreign policy again.

Everyone is prone to moral reasoning. It's intuitive and philosophers have been doing it since ancient times. In this case, there is a consensus around wanting to help the Palestinian people. But any given moral reasoning derived from our goal doesn't necessarily lead us to a course of action that can help them. With a clear goal in mind, utility provides a clear-cut and consistent answer in the form of voting for Harris. edit: typo

Reposting my comment from the other thread because I was specifically asked to elaborate by @Rekorse@sh.itjust.works but the thread got locked:

Elaboration:

The trolley problem isn't intended to demonstrate that consequentialism is simply correct, as some people seem to think. Rather, it's meant to highlight disagreements between different moral philosophies and present contradictions in our moral intuitions. There are two follow ups to the classic trolley problem: one involves pushing someone off a bridge to stop the trolley, and the other involves a doctor killing a healthy patient in order to harvest their organs to save the lives of five people who need transplants. While a majority of people agree with pulling the lever in the original problem, most people disagree with pushing the man off a bridge, and virtually no one agrees with harvesting organs from a healthy patient. This reveals an apparent contradiction in our moral intuitions. To adopt the principal that it is right to kill one to save five very quickly leads to conclusions that are widely condemned as morally abhorrent, and so a deeper examination is needed. Like most things in philosophy, the trolley problem is meant to raise questions, not answer them.

The deontological answer is to say that consequentialism is simply wrong, because it leads to those sorts of conclusions, but in my view this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The reason our moral intuitions scream at us not to push the man off the bridge or harvest organs is that these hypotheticals have unrealistic constraints and foreknowledge. In real life, it's extremely unlikely that a trolley with enough force to run over 5 people would be stopped by one person, and it's also not something we could possibly calculate with any degree of certainty ahead of time. Our physical intuitions get mixed up with our moral intuitions, and it's difficult to actually accept the constraints of the hypothetical. The organ harvesting example is even worse. If the crime was ever revealed to the public, it would cause major damage to the reputation of the entire medical field, which would cause people to avoid potentially lifesaving treatments, and the doctor doing it would lose their license preventing them from saving who knows how many lives. Meanwhile, surgeries carry inherent risks and it is impossible to know with the certainty assumed by the problem that they will be successful, and there's also the possibility that the other patients could miraculously recover. Moreover, the problem of not having enough organs could be addressed on a larger scale through policy without resorting to murder. The problem asks us to assume that every possible alternative is arbitrarily cut off and that we are 100% guaranteed to get away with it - which our brains rebel against, for very good reason. Many people commit crimes feeling certain that they'll get away with it, but then get caught, and immediate, short term solutions often seem appealing, even when they might have very negative long term consequences or when a more cautious, long term approach might be wiser.

It might seem that I'm simply rejecting the validity of those hypotheticals altogether, and to an extent I am, but this analysis reveals something important. People often fail to consider all these different factors that might make a situation not as simple as the original trolley problem, even when they appear to be. That is the danger of "base" consequentialism, of applying the principle of "the ends justify the means" blindly and without due consideration of alternative solutions or of consequences that are not immediately apparent. It is generally very foolish to reduce things to the trolley problem when they are more complicated, and people who reduce the election to a trolley problem are making the exact same kind of error as people who reduce the organ harvesting thought experiment to a trolley problem.

I'll use a hypothetical of my own to further illustrate my point. Suppose you and four other people have been taken hostage, and the hostage taker tells you to kill one of the other hostages, or else he'll kill all of them including you. Is this a trolley problem? It might appear to be, but the reality is that introducing a human actor instead of a purely mechanical process changes everything. What happens if, after you kill a hostage, the gunman says, "Great! From now on, you work for me. You will kill anyone I say to kill. And if you refuse, I'll kill twice as many people. My first order is for you to capture more hostages so I can repeat this and recruit another person just like you." Isn't that obviously indefensible? It would be completely justified for someone to kill you to stop you from doing that. But this is exactly where the ideology of lesser-evilism leads. We cannot allow ourselves to be manipulated like machines into strengthening the very people who put us into the situation in the first place.

I make a point every time I refer to lesser-evilism to call it an ideology, because that's what it is, even though it's adherents do not recognize it as such and simply call it obvious, objective, and rational. It is none of those things. It is important to recognize that this is a specific belief system, and one that frequently leads to absurd and abhorrent conclusions, and that many people reject, including many academics and philosophers.

This is more direct, but I always saw the original thought experiment as a way to explore that very concept - is inaction a "choice"? IMO, the only rational answer is Yes.

Even without the third rail, "no choice" is very clearly a choice. People just selfishly want to believe they don't share responsibility if they just let things happen "naturally", as of their inaction means they aren't involved. But they are. We all are. Pretending otherwise is foolish.

Amrikani Falesteini here,

If you þink letting Donald Trump back into office is a reasonable answer to democratic leniency on Israeli war crimes after he handed Bibi West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights, and is right now actively encouraging Bibi to keep going in mimic of Nixon and Reagan before him, you are eiðer a knowing zionist agent, or an unwitting one, and eiðer way you need to quit bitching, sit ð fuck down, and do your share of solidarity ðis november if you want to keep using my people's bodies as your set dressing for your white people savior shit.

Add disabled people to this list, homeless people, just so many of us who would suffer under a facist.