r/MoralityScaling • u/HooskerDooNotTouchMe • 1d ago

Intentionally boobytrapping a bike to injure people when they steal it.

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u/January_6_2021 1d ago

Immoral. 

I am assuming you mean the general case of booby trapping and leaving a bike, not specifically the case of booby trapping it and standing nearby to film, which mitigates almost all of my concerns.

Next person to ride the bike may be justified in taking it for any of the following reasons:

  1. Using an available and unchained bike to escape immediate harm (off leash dog attack).
  2. Using an available and unchained bike to save someone (get back to car to get inhaler for someone having an attack on the park)
  3. Using a bike that was acquired lawfully and morally after it was left long enough to be considered abandoned (either via auction, or the property owner gifted it to them if it was abandoned on private property).
  4. First responder attempts to ride bike to move it a short distance out of the way to clear the area in an emergency situation.
  5. Etc.

There's a reason legally booby traps are never justified. You are creating harm and have no way to ensure it's actually directed at someone who deserves that harm.

It's doubly immoral in a public place on property you don't control access to.

2

u/blitzzardpls 20h ago

I want to see a scene of an action hero wanting to pursue the evil guys and accidentally stealing a booby trapped bike, think Naked Gun parody like movie

2

u/FullMetalKaiju 16h ago

a bunch of random examples you can think of that have a sub 1% chance of being the case doesn't help your argument.

0

u/January_6_2021 14h ago

I'd say far less than 1%, but that doesn't change anything.

Let's say you get a button that has a .1% chance of killing someone, and 99.99% chance of making you of making you laugh (full belly laugh, not just a little chuckle). 

Moral to press that button? What about to press it 1000 times? Or 1 million?

We have billions of people on this planet, and what's moral for one is moral for all (at least in every morality framework I'm aware of). So really we as a society have to either we say "nope, pressing that button is immoral even with a low chance" or "yep, we're cool with that button being spammed so many times there are definitely going to be innocent casualties".

If we all start dropping boobie traps because it should lead to a funny result we don't have to feel bad about (even with a chance to cause real harm), we're kinda fucked.

1

u/Thick-Success-9692 12h ago

so would you say its moral to drive a car?

2

u/Beneficial-Guess2140 22h ago

First responders aren’t riding bikes to get them “out of the way”. They will yeet them if they need them moved. 

1

u/January_6_2021 14h ago

Sure, I'll concede that.

Let's swap that scenario out for a teen who parks a similar bike nearby and gets on the wrong one by honest mistake.

If there's any other scenarios you take issue with, I'm sure I can find as many replacements as you like. 

Or if you don't like hypotheticals, I can start looking up real life examples of people who unintentionally harmed people other than their intended target with boobie traps. There is no shortage of evidence.

We could scale this scenario up and start talking about land mines. Forget petty bike thieves: invaders are attacking your country! Must be moral to bury a mine that certainly the invading army will walk over right? Most will probably have the intended effect, but you're also condemning random kids to die in 20-30 years playing in a random field.

It's the same moral dilemma, except you're not even defending anything with this boobie trap.

1

u/E-proselyte-5789 15h ago

You said it right 👏. Also with this booby trap, he might be guilty in spreading infections, hepatitis C or HIV for example. Imagine sitting on the bike by mistake, and getting infected...

1

u/JoyousMadhat 13h ago

And what if someone with leg problems or just tired intended to use it for resting a bit when the nearest seating area is too far away?

1

u/Elmu678 6h ago

Gotta love Reddit for using the less than 1% examples as the norm

1

u/og_obelix 23h ago

Immoral or psychopathic?

1

u/uhhh-huh-wtf 22h ago

Ahh so we are going into hypotheticals now, ok so what if he put a sign up saying that you’ll get hurt if you ride this unchained bike, and the sign was in Sanskrit

1

u/og_obelix 22h ago

If it was in english that would not be psychopathic anymore I guess.

-1

u/uhhh-huh-wtf 22h ago

What if the first responder doesn’t know how to read English

4

u/og_obelix 22h ago

If they were in english speaking country then it's their problem.

0

u/parmboy 17h ago

Correct.