No Simple Answers

"I don't know," is my only honest response to a host of questions involving tough trade-offs, where multiple good things come into conflict. A few examples:

• If vegetarianism were unhealthy, would minimizing animal suffering still make it "right" not to eat meat? How much unhealthiness would be needed, versus how much suffering, to tip the balance, and at what cost, to whom?
• Similarly, if long-distance running were bad for the body, would it still be worth doing for the fun, the mental health, the friendships that it promotes?
• On the larger scale of ecology, how much extra expense or trouble should a person undergo (or be required by others to undergo) in order to minimize environmental damage?
• How much risk of damage, for instance from vaccination, can society impose on people in exchange for benefits to others?

Rush Kidder mused about these conflicts and various ways to resolve them—Utilitarianism vs. Golden Rule vs. Categorical Imperative vs. etc.—but I don't remember a satisfactory conclusion to that discussion. Maybe there isn't a simple answer ... which takes me back to something posted here in May 1999, a Tom Toles "Curious Avenue" comic strip from a few years before that:

One character says, "Maybe you're just looking for simple answers. Maybe there are no simple answers. Problems require thought and dedication."

The other character replies, "But there are simple answers. There are just no good answers. --- Although that one was pretty good."

^z - 2009-12-01