Sunday School

[DavisModerator]

No you cannot know what consequences are going to be. You can assume and/or predict but you cannot know. That is an essential motivation for taking deontological ethics seriously. You can very likely know the consequences of dropping a large object from a high distance. You cannot know the consequences of lying. There are simply too many unknowns. You cannot know how people will react nor the long term many repercussions. And the consequences are relative to many different agents.

The human condition is not one in which you can say, I do this, this will be the consequence. It very well may not work out that way.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Consequences?

Consequences of lying?

Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to _________.

Forseeability and proximate cause are concepts in negligence law and elements of claims. So causation or our perception/understanding of it is an integral aspect of legal claims. As one might expect it is not required of a plaintiff to demonstrate the PARTICULAR harm resulting from the negligence, only that some harm of that nature might ensue. I say that to say something. And that is a consequence of i do not know what.

[UnseenParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

Forseeability and proximate cause are concepts in negligence law and elements of claims. So causation or our perception/understanding of it is an integral aspect of legal claims. As one might expect it is not required of a plaintiff to demonstrate the PARTICULAR harm resulting from the negligence, only that some harm of that nature might ensue. I say that to say something. And that is a consequence of i do not know what.

But some harm “might” ensue of any action we take. I would think that such consequences, to incur legal liability, might be said to be likely or predictable.

Some humdrum decision might cause any number of consequences some highly likely, some somewhat likely, some merely possible, but some highly unlikely as well.  Some positive, some negative. The very same decision.

Example: If I lend my car to a friend to go to a poetry slam at a bar, he might have one too many and hit a pedestrian when returning the car or he might meet a girl there who drives him and the car back and ends up marrying him. Where is my responsibility in all that? Am I equally responsible for both the highway death in the one instance and the living happily ever after in the other.

BTW, ever heard of the butterfly effect?

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Davis wrote:

No you cannot know what consequences are going to be. You can assume and/or predict but you cannot know. That is an essential motivation for taking deontological ethics seriously.

This is true.  All we have are: 1) the (joint) goal; 2) tried and trusted methods designed to achieve it.  So it is reasonable to rely on the methods, but not to the obvious detriment of the joint goal.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

As one might expect it is not required of a plaintiff to demonstrate the PARTICULAR harm resulting from the negligence, only that some harm of that nature might ensue.

In other words, that they were acting recklessly without due regard to the right thing to do.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Autumn,

Interestingly enough, some parents call dairy milk “Moo Juice” to encourage their young toddlers to drink their milk. I wonder if this California asshole or the dairy industry lawyers would call Child Protective Services on such parents?

[jakelafortParticipant]

Unseen, causation as an aspect of legal claims can get murky. By a preponderance of the evidence an action or omission by defendant creates an undue and forseeable risk of harm. Said omission or commission has to be the actual cause (sometime referred to as but for cause) and the proximate cause. Proximate cause takes a lot of explaining and exploring in law school. Some of the bar exam questions involving proximate cause are tough.

Your hypothetical involving the lending of car and an accident would not satisfy proximate cause unless you spiced it up a bit. If for instance the lender knew the driver was drunk or subject to seizures, narcolepsy or the like and in spite of that knowledge went right ahead.

If those responsible for unleashing AI and the genesis of general intelligence and who knows what horrible consequences that will likely satisfy proximate cause even though the consequences are so speculative. And yes i have seen numerous butterfly references. Read it first in some book that is lost to memory.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Simon that is kind of correct in a nonlegal framing.

[StregaModerator]

Proximate cause is the fulcrum of the insurance industry. One of the sample narratives which challenged the learner to pinpoint proximate cause, went something like this:-

A car backfires

A horse shies and tosses its rider

The rider breaks a leg in the fall

The ambulance takes the rider to hospital.

The rider contracts a virus from another patient.

The rider dies.

The question is, which occurrence would be ‘proximate cause’ for the riders death?

[—Participant]

Strega wrote:

The question is, which occurrence would be ‘proximate cause’ for the riders death?

So what you’re getting at is the family of the deceased should sue the horse, yeah?

[StregaModerator]

Or the car driver for not maintaining his car adequately, enabling it to backfire. The horse of course had input through it’s reaction which unseated the rider. The ambulance driver chose the hospital to which the rider was going. To a degree, he’s a link in the sequence chain. The hospital allowed the rider-patient to become infected – perhaps through exposure to another patient?

I don’t think I’d worry if I was the horse 🙂

[jakelafortParticipant]

I don’t think I’d worry if I was the horse 🙂

Unless the plaintiff calls Doctor Dolittle as an expert witness and is able to uncover a nasty case of nerves/anxiety easily treatable with xanax and willfully refused by the equine who had reacted similarly to numerous backfiring from his owner’s rear end as well as his jalopy.

Under those circumstances the plaintiff will take the horse for all the hay and oats it owns subject to equine exemptions provided by the state.

[StregaModerator]

Laughs, you added that the owners flatulence acted in a Pavlovian way by training the horse to over-react and rear up at all similar sounds.

I am sure an argument for proximate cause could be made for the supplier of whatever culinary delights the owner enjoyed despite knowing they caused him flatulence.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

“Shrink-flation” is an externality created by just plain old inflation.

When the Federal Reserve at the demand of Congress and the Presidents Trump and Biden prints more money than the supply of goods and services and thus increases demand and overall prices, that increase in prices includes the cost of ingredients and capital used in manufactured goods.

When the costs of ingredients go up yet consumer pressure is on to keep prices of goods down, manufacturers respond by scaling back the portion sizes, by using less ingredients, or even using substitute ingredients that may not be of normal quality.

The ones to blame for “shrink-flation” would be Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve, as well as Congress, Trump, and Biden for calling for and approval of the so-called “stimulus.”

I concur with you on generics and store brands. They are made in the same factories as name brands, yet don’t have the advertising, marketing, and celebrity promotion expense of name brands, which helps keep generics and store brands less expensive.

I am only loyal to a name brand if it has a unique desirable feature not available in other products. Even tyen, I try to l buy those in bulk or through closeouts, clearance, surplus, salvage, and bent-and-dent outlets.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Laughs, you added that the owners flatulence acted in a Pavlovian way by training the horse to over-react and rear up at all similar sounds.

Our school lesson on Pavlov was interrupted when the dinner bell rang and we all went to the canteen.

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