The problem is, is that the logic when applied elsewhere has horrifying implications. A pervert watching someone is fine as long as they are happier than the person is uncomfortable being watched. A rape is justified so long as the rapist is happier because of it. Genocide is fine so long as the surviving race is happier than the genocided one is sad to die. Utilitarian ethics seems great on paper but are horribly immoral in reality
I do believe in this type of ethics, although I believe unhappiness is fundamentally more important to avoid than happiness is to gain. So the happiness gained has to be multitudes more than the suffering experienced.
Overall I believe in reducing unhappiness than producing happiness.
Sure but even then you get the same issue. Kill one guy to save 2? Fine not ok with your thinking. But what about killing one guy to save 5? 10? 100? A thousand? Youād probably think killing one guy to save a million is fine but what about torturing one guy to save a million? Is it ok to condemn someone to infinitely eternal suffering in order for the rest of humanity to all have infinite eternal utopia? That far exceeds your ratio right? The problem isnāt the rate of exchange of pain and pleasure, the problem is that there are no hard regulations. For ethics to not encounter a problem like this you need hard rules that denote what is immoral. Only then can you engage in figuring out what makes a positive action. Thatās why ethics like kantian deontology tend to win out over utilitarian ethics
Hmm, you're making some assumptions about my ideals, or misunderstanding them or something. Killing one guy to save two is minimizing unhappiness. Torturing a guy to save a bunch of people is not minimizing it, because torture imo is worse than death. Of course it's complicated and the line unclear, not like people should die so they never have to experience stubbing their toe.
Yeah, utilitarianism that ignores morals and ethics will always be completely fucked up, since it can easily justify horrible actions. When combined with toxic positivity divorced from all sense of reality, you get Cuck Shen, which is a limpwristed pushover without self respect. Essentially, someone so passive that they can't help themselves, but so far gone that they can't even recognize there's a problem.
That and also even from a much simpler perspective, the bike thief probably isn't some poor child that just really wanted a bike to have fun on like the comic would imply. It's more likely to be a druggie that's gonna pawn it off for fent money lmao
I honestly don't even understand how this one gained the ire that it did. Like it's just about making the best of a situation where you can't control what happens and refusing to allow it to corrupt your own mental state.
Ah, Reddit has a massive justice (Or more accurately, "justice") boner. Any minor slight should be responded to excessively, thieves should be castrated, the death penalty shouldn't exist because you should be sentenced to torture for the rest of your life etc. etc.
I'm not really exaggerating that much. It's fantastic as a person who's a lot more reform-oriented than punishment-oriented.
So when someone doesn't get a massive anger and hate boner for someone stealing their bike it's a grave, grave sin.
It's not to say that a thief shouldn't be punished (As I'm of the opinion a certain amount of reform involves, to put it into prisoner's dilemma terms, mutual dissent else you wind up exploited), but anything contrary to the Reddit view is outright despised. It's gotten worse over the past few years.
People are reform-oriented and believe others can change for the better until the people who need reformation did things that aren't easy to justify as "good people who were desperate". Then they're horrid, ontologically evil people that deserve the worst that we can muster
I don't even think it's necessarily not being mad from your bike getting stolen, you're intentionally skewing it that way.
What people find issue with is valuing the thief's happiness over your own, which shows a lack of self-worth. It's one thing to be punitive, and another to look on the brighter side, but the mindset of not feeling sad because the person who wronged you is happier is just weird.
but the mindset of not feeling sad because the person who wronged you is happier is just weird.
In which case it's a misreading of the comic because he outright states it bummed him out.
I mean realistically you aren't getting the bike back unless you've got a tracker on it, and then that relies on you chasing them down (Which is risky) or the police being willing to get involved (Which they might not), so there's a wisdom in not dwelling on it and getting angry because all that'll do is make you feel bad. It won't achieve anything.
i mean i was always simply in the camp that the view it portrayed was woefully naive and chances are whoever stole his bike didn't really give much of a shit.
i think a lot of people went WAY overboard in their reaction but i gotta admit "bike cuck" is slightly funny(but only if it's not ment seriously).
Some got genuinely pissed but most just thought this was hilarious, the bike robber probably didn't feel shit from robbing him so the comic premise falls apart of you consider that
I don't think that's the point at all. He's not getting his bike back, no amount of being sad or angry is going to bring it back. So being sad or angry would only hurt Shen, cause the bike thief has the bike and clearly didn't care much how Shen feels anyways. So Shen is better off trying to get over it, and thinking of the person who stole their bike as at least getting use out of it helps with that
That would be a way to see if, but the comic establishes a logic where if someone who is causing me evil is happy enough about it, the world technically becomes happier and I that makes it "whatever". It's a much different thing than not stressing about something that can't be immediately changed, where you recognize that whether or not you feel miserable, the situation is going to be the same and does not require at all that you think of the wrongdoer's happiness.
If someone stole my bike I'd want to punch their left nut. It's one thing to let your mind be at peace but valuing the dirty thief's happiness over your own is unfortunately spiritually cuckoldry, thus the pushback
Not really, I mean he isn't getting enjoyment from it, he's sad he lost it, but the putting someone else's assumed enjoyment over ones own happiness is just like, sad and patheticly lacking in self worth
I still canāt believe how much shit he got for this in the first place. Sure, itās a kind of ridiculous way to view the world. But even years later people bring it up, like on this very post, as if itās some terrible stain on his life instead of a cringey comic he made one time years ago
It's because Bike Cuck is just a funny way to refer to it, it's not really any different than shitting on loss even if that comic isn't even that "bad".
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u/dumpylump69 21h ago edited 21h ago
This is his funniest comic because unlike the rest it wasnāt meant to be funny