I suppose it's not surprising that someone who quotes the slave master from Roots would need this concept explained to them, but depriving someone of their life to harvest their organs for someone else qualifies as creating suffering.

They suffer because they are no longer able to enjoy the pleasures of life.

They suffer because their final hours are filled with the stress of knowing that they will be killed.

Their friends and family suffer from the loss of one of their own.

Either you're trolling, or you're a moron for asking me this. Pick one.

As WR stated, life is suffering. If not for suffering no one would ever do anything. It is, in a certain way, what makes life worth living. It is what drives us to do put so much effort into doing what we do it is what drives us to seek pleasure. The absence of pleasure is not suffering, it is merely the absence of pleasure. One might as well state that a rock suffers because it will never experience the pleasures of life.
By definition, inanimate objects cannot suffer. That doesn't mean that being transformed into an inanimate object is a good thing, just that it is the surest way to eliminate suffering. Since compassion concerns itself with the alleviation of suffering rather than the maximization of pleasure (it is utilitarianism which does so) it is correct to say that the total destruction of all life in the universe is the most compassionate act one could commit.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

There is no need for them to know that they will be killed at all. In fact, giving this knowledge would be counterproductive in most situations; it might encourage resistance. Also, the original thought experiment did not contain any reference to family or friends; it can easily be the case that the individuals in question have neither friends nor family.

Regardless, by your own criteria the assertion that killing one to save another causes suffering makes no sense. If the end of life causes suffering then it is a wash either way, at the very least. Of course, one might use the criteria you proposed (knowledge of impending death, number of friends and family) to calculate the relative suffering each death will cause and choose the death which causes the least suffering.

Your assertion that allowing 5 to die to save 1 is somehow more compassionate than killing 1 to save 5 doesn't make much since due to the fact that the deaths of five individuals are likely to cause five times as much suffering as the death of one individual is.





We seem to be missing each other over the issue of positive and negative causation. You seem to be coming from the position that only positive causation matters.

Logically, negative causation is just as important as positive causation is. Doing nothing is an action. If Not A causes B then by not doing A you are causing B. While most systems of laws and ethics do not hold one liable for inaction except in rare circumstances where a duty to act is presumed to exist, action and inaction are essentially equivalent in the chain of causation. If you have the ability to rescue a person and choose not to, then you are a cause of his injuries. That you choose not to because doing so would injure another is irrelevant to causation, you are a cause
either way.

And there is the rub. If you are put in a situation where you can save one by killing another then you are a killer either way. You can choose to kill through action or through inaction, but you cannot choose to not kill. It is a trap, it's a Sophie's Choice. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. The very existence of the choice forces you to be a monstrous bastard.

I'm not saying that compassionate (or utilitarian) organ harvesting is a good thing - for a variety of reasons it is not and it would be a disaster if implemented as a social policy; but in certain isolated non-repeating circumstances it is the choice that results in the least amount of suffering. Since the only choice that results in 0 suffering for all is the simultaneous unexpected death of all, causing the least amount of suffering is the best we can reasonably go for.

Then I suppose protect would have been a better choice of words. Still, you are in a position to kill them in this thought experiment. By not killing him, you are causing him to continue to live. You don't chose to not kill him, then he will not be alive. By making the choice to not kill him, you are saving his life, or protecting him from yourself.



Perhaps it is the ethical reprehensibility and social unsustainability of the organ harvesting example. We might instead choose to use the train example. You work at a railroad switching post. There are two tracks, one leading to a tunnel and one to a bridge. The bridge is undergoing routine maintenance. Around midday, an unexpected earthquake causes the tunnel to collapse. A train is due through in a few minutes and you radio the train's conductor to inform him of the situation telling him to stop. He replies that he can't; his train's brakes are damaged. If he continues on his path, the train will crash and hundreds of passengers will die. You radio the bridge maintenance crew and tell them to evacuate; they say that they can't, they don't have time. So you have a choice. You can do nothing and let the train crash, killing hundreds of people, or you can switch the train onto the bridge, killing the substantially smaller maintenance crew.

It is the same scenario, the same basic logical question; Act A kills few people, Act Not A kills many people, yet for some reason some people will say that switching the train is somehow different from harvesting the organs, though switching the train is just as much an act of premeditated killing. I can understand why, this example is cleaner, but it is still logically identical.

Argumentum ad hominem. Personal attacks don't bolster arguments. Neither does appeal to ridicule.

It's not logically identical. For starters, you are again abusing the english language when you state that, in the original example, you are "causing" the healthy man to survive. You aren't "causing" anything; you're simply not killing him.

Secondly, the train example is not the same as the organ havesting example. More importantly, neither example has anything to do with the concept of compassion. In the train example, there is an immediate threat, and an immediate choice. The track *has* to go somewhere. In the organ example, you don't *have* to tear out someone's organs, and saying that you only have the choice of murdering a healthy person and giving away their organs or watching the rest of them die is simply ridiculous. And again, regardless of what you're choosing in either example, you are not making a "compassionate" choice. In the organ example, you're simply choosing to either murder someone for their organs or not. In the train example, the choice is even more ridiculous; a train with no brakes is going to crash or derail anyway. So if you choose to kill the rail crew, you're killing them AND the people on the train.

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002962/ This article can help better understand negative causation.

In both examples in their most restrictive forms can be boiled down to the same logical equation.

A and B are sets

A {Some persons not in set B}
B {Some persons not in set A}

x>0

|A| = x ; |B| = x +y

If A lives then B dies
If A dies then B lives

One may choose the life-state of A

This is the basic form of a binary Sophie's Choice. There are more complex Sophie's Choices, with more sets and the potential for some overlap between sets, but this is the basic form that we're dealing with.

We could also use torture states rather than life states, IE thus you would get to choose who gets tortured. We could even create rather complex suffering functions.
The result is the same, a bad thing happens to some group and you must choose which one. You can't not choose. If you choose not to decide you'll still have made a choice.

You seem to be applying some sort of moral value to murder which is uncalled for when acting on the natural human impulse to minimize suffering. If murder results in less overall suffering than not murder does, then murder is the most compassionate choice.

Assuming the track is long enough and the engine can be cut off, friction would eventually bring the train to a halt.

Those assumptions aren't part of the initial scenario.

And again, I suggest you look into the definition of compassion. You're trying to shoehorn the word around a different concept. It's like saying that a car is a type of bathtub, just because you put people in both of them.

Definition 2 is pretty much the one I'm going on, since it is the only one that pertains to actions.

Amen on that; I've abandoned the P.O.ed Yaks thread for precisely that reason, as mfb and toturi are currently hashing it out.

It's okay, though; I got what I needed from it.

My apologies. It took me a while to realize what was going on, but at this point I think Hyz is just trolling. Back on the topic of Bunraku parlors, I think that realistically, the number of "involuntary" puppet operations would be fairly low. It's a pretty expensive operation to run, fairly distasteful even among Shadowrunners (judging by the comments in the books on the subject), and if the whole operation relied on kidnapping unwilling people, then having Bunraku parlors be so easy to find and up-front about what they are just doesn't make sense. They'd be raided every week, either by Lone Star or, if the 'Star is being paid off (which couldn't last long...if the op is primarily kidnapping-based, it's only a matter of time before you kidnap someone who's paying for 'Star coverage) then by relatives, rival gangs, or activists.

If people are willing to blow up factories to save a tree, imagine what they'd be willing to do to you for being involved in bunraku slavery.

Involuntary Bunraku should be the province of Yakuza of "low character", guys that even other Yaks look down on.

Of course, even voluntary work like this is fairly sad. Economically depressed people willing to literally give up control of themselves for money, selling their minds as well as their bodies. Less disturbing, but still pretty dystopian.

hey, hey, whoah, pal. it takes two to tango.

I believe it's only a few thousand for enough skillwires to run a personafix. Less if it's used and you don't care whether the girl gets an infection and dies or not. Even a toothless hooker can make that up in a month.

I don't think most clients would even recognize an involuntary bunraku from a willing one (personafix, remember?) All your shadowrunner knows is the place down the street won't fulfill the fantasy he wants, but this place will, and cuts $100 off the price to boot.

The star only gets to raid if they can pay.

No, I joke. Even modern day prostitutes give about 10% of their tricks for free to cops. There was an article on it very recently. Cops don't ask questions because they get free services. A legitimate parlor isn't going to do that, and Lone Star doesn't get paid to take care of the SINless. If someone important is grabbed, that particular joint is busted, or the Star rescues the person discretely and makes headlines about it, then lets the parlor owner return to his business.

It isn't especially hard to make the place hard to find as well. The girl has a PERSONAFIX CHIP IN HER. I tell her to go to 12th and West and meet up with Joe, she does it. I don't have to go anywhere! If Joe happens to be a cop, well, I'm out a set of used skillwires.

People are willing to blow up factories right now to save trees, but I don't see anyone going to any of the zillions of cheap, forced-sex whorehouses in the world and blowing them up.

Why is that? It's good money. I don't recollect the Mafia saying "well, drugs are good money, but they ruin lives and bring down the value of our neighborhood. We shouldn't pursue that revenue." You think the Yaks are much different?


I can see not allowing bunraku because it hits too close to home, but arguing if you're arguing it doesn't make reasonable sense, you're just not paying attention.

I was thinking more along the lines of interrogation, even beyond pillowtalk. But hell, think of all the information the Yakuza could squeeze out of clients without them even knowing.

well, bunraku parlors are not necessarily primarily kidnapping-based, at least in the sense you're thinking of it. if i were going to run a bunraku parlor, the people i'd be kidnapping to staff it would be barrens trash from parts of the barrens that my syndicate controls. and i wouldn't kidnap them, per se; i'd simply offer them credit, and then force them to work in my brothel when they find themselves unable to pay.

moreover, the Yakuza operate globally, in their way. i can see the Triads selling girls and boys kidnapped from China to the Seattle Yaks for use in bunraku parlors; meanwhile, the Yaks are selling the people they kidnap to the Vory in Vladivostok. that will certainly cut down on the number of angry parents/corps/gangers/whatever who might otherwise be beating down the Yaks' doors in search of their lost loved ones--those loved ones, rather than showing up elsewhere in the city under the Yaks' employ, simply disappear.

indeed.

I disagree entirely. While I do think there will be some quite classy Bunraku parlours, that doesn't mean the hostesses are altogether willing participants. I think by far the majority of these types of places will be stocked with the less-than-willing.

Less-than-willing does not have to mean kidnap victims. There are many sources for this type of work, must as there are sources for protitution and human slavery today. This is even easier, because you can program the person not to rebel against your authority.

Still waiting for that quote that states that prostitution is illegal in the UCAS, or indeed anywhere in the Sixth World.

Bunraku parlours have been mentioned quite a few times throughout Shadowrun's history, so I don't think they are anywhere near as uncommon as some people seem to think.

Clothing manufacture is legal too, but sweatshops still get raided.

Remember too that a lot of women in Shadowrun are likely smuggled in from other places because slaves are cheaper or they could be refugees or simply SINless people working off debts in the parlor. Even if prostitution is legal in an area, smuggling in or otherwise taking advantage of SINless and keeping them in a shitty situation usually isn't (although, then again, nobody's particularly interested in prosecuting either, since nobody gives a shit about the SINless). Why do you think it always seems to be groups like the Triads, Vory and Yaks who are in on this? They have connections and applying enough pressure to ensure "cooperation" is both their specialty and what seperates them from legitimate groups.

Anyway, there's way too many variables involved to make many blanket statements and I honestly don't think the devs are too interested in spending pages upon pages on Bunraku economics when that's really something best left to individual GMs. It's a really seedy topic to begin with, so it's entirely appropriate that individual groups make the decisions on exactly how far the rabbit hole goes.

yeah, and plenty of 'escort services' advertise too. they just don't advertise things like "WE GIVE YOU SEX FOR MONEY". if you go to a men's club and all the women there look like Nadja Daviar, nobody needs to tell you that you can have sex with Nadja Daviar for a hundred bucks. deniability is a wonderful thing.

besides, bunraku parlors aren't high-profile crime. nobody cares what happens to lost runaways. especially if, as i mentioned above, the syndicates do the smart thing and import all their 'talent', while exporting their own kidnapees elsewhere. it works in the real world, i see no reason why it wouldn't in SR.

Not just look like. Close as I can tell, with the level of genetech in Augmentation they could very easily be Nadja Daviar genetically.

That would be swell.

I certainly can imagine a bunraku customer loudly complaining to the properitor that his Nadja nipples are the wrong color.

i just... i avoided addressing these three sentences because i wasn't sure i could directly respond without it coming off as a personal attack. but it's 3am, and this has been niggling around in the back of my mind all day. so let me try and defuse a situation before it starts by stating, for the record, that i don't hold it against JonathanC for being uninformed in this regard. there are a lot of people who are uninformed. this isn't something that most people want to have knowledge of, so they simply don't ever find out about it. now, with that out of the way:

minus the cybernetics, this is exactly what's happening all over the fucking world, every minute of every god damned day. and don't let the "all over the world" part fool you: the US is both a consumer and a provider of trafficked humans. that's what it's generally called--human trafficking, in the sense that one might traffic in produce or arms or drugs. it's a nice way of saying slavery. in some cases, it's pretty overt--gangs of armed men go around grabbing poor people and trading them up the chain for money, drugs, and weapons. in other cases, it's handled less thuggishly: someone reads about a opportunity to teach their native language to kids in another country, all up front expenses paid in return for a percentage of their wages once they arrive--but when they do arrive, they find themselves alone in a foreign country, and the man they just handed their passport to "for safe keeping" is talking about how there aren't any teaching positions open just yet, but hey, you're a healthy girl, i know this nightclub...

"there isn't enough payola"? wake the fuck up, for chrissake. there's always enough goddamn payola. the global sex industry makes billions and billions of dollars, and it's always hungry for more. if it can't find willing participants, there is more than enough money there to buy fresh meat. Seoul, Hong Kong, LA--you can't spit in some cities without hitting three girls who were brought there from another country, either under false pretenses or coercion, to have sex with strangers for money.

and that's today. that's right the fuck now. that's without corporate extraterritoriality, that's without criminal syndicates backed by draconic wealth, that's without the ridiculously overblown moral decay that sci-fi authors use to make their dark futures palatable. this is what people do to each other.

I didn't say it would be widely used. Just that it is a possibility.

I have no doubt that there are niche customers who would be very particular in what they want, and can afford it. In a world today where there are restaurants that have salt and butter courses, and even such that some go so far to distinguish and emphasize the cow that the butter came from, that a true connoisseur would demand the highest quality imaginable, and pay for it.

To take Daviar for example, I can think that there are people who can and do pay for the experience of having a night with someone who is genesculpted, bodysculpted, and mentally programmed to be in all aspects that woman. Does it cost a lot to make sure she is identical, or as close to it as is humanly possible down to her natural body odor and kinesiology? Yes. Is is worth it to get the "formula" down for maybe twenty in all of North America, and fifty in the world? I have no doubt it would be.

Maybe someone wants to enjoy the best bunkraku money can buy. Maybe some syndicate got their hands on the guinea pig that was used to make sure the actress whose career was made playing her as accurately as possible was as close as possible. Maybe ... whatever.

I had a specific concept of an Archconservative Senator who became so obsessed with hating her for being a foreign-born elf who was a great dragon's translator and... everything else... that every week he would meet with such a simulacra and do things to her.

I'm reminded of voodoo parlors, for some reason, and secondly Bioshock: "would you kindly unlock Dunkelzahn's safe?"

I'm aware of the proliferation of human trafficking. I'm aware of the brothels that make use of it. The major difference is that Bunraku parlors are portrayed as being reasonably mainstream, easy to find, and most of all, *they advertise*. If Bunraku Parlors were something you had to be 'in the know' to find, or at least on the street to find, that would be one thing. If they have AR advertisements directing you to your local parlor, that's something else entirely.

You don't walk down the street and see billboards for brothels featuring eastern european sex slaves.

Read exactly what I was saying instead of latching onto a small part of it. NO, there is NOT enough payola to protect an operation like that that does NOTHING to protect itself from scrutiny. The key aspect of human trafficking that makes it so hard to nail down is that the places are mobile and cheap. You can set one up or break the operation down and flee very quickly. You don't set up a real location with setpieces designed to match whoever the girl is dressed up as, and you certainly don't have a full-service fucking MEDICAL FACILITY to put her through 20k+ in surgery.

With AR Environments and 2070 level technology, bunraku operations are pocket sized. A cardboard box could become the Oval Office, and nanite cosmetic surgery is, at worst, van-portable.

Skillwires wouldn't be needed for all but the most insanely expensive parlors, the type that likely can afford near-extraterritorial treatment - such as renting tribal land from the Cascade Crow (using one of the many abandoned resorts as a cover).

IIRC, you don't need skillwires to use p'fix chips, only to perfectly mimic the singing talent of Nina Simone, or the combat abilities of that year's Desert Wars gold medalist... You don't even need a datajack for most of the parlors' needs.

It's only the most rare of clients who'd require that level of joytoy.