You are a killer

The argument for why you are a killer is plain to see. There is a lot of preventable death in the world. If you do not act to prevent as much death as you can, you act to cause death.

Say it costs approximately $3,000 to save a life, and say you have approximately $3,000 to spare.

• If you spend your money on charity, one less person will die than if you spend your money on nonessentials.
• If you spend your money on nonessentials, one more person will die than if you spend your money on charity.

There are few examples of cause and effect simpler than this.

You are also a murderer

So you are a killer (unless you have never spent $3,000 on nonessentials). But are you a murderer? In other words, do you kill knowingly and without sufficient reason?

Perhaps you did not know you were a killer before reading this, but now you know. Since $3,000 worth of nonessentials is not sufficient reason to kill, unless you stop killing, you are a murderer.

"But I didn't do anything!"

The intent argument claims that the critical distinction between a murderer and a “normal” person is that the former actually intends to kill, while the latter merely allows the “normal course of events” to unfold.

Read more ⏷

The intent argument fails when the motivations of a murderer are properly understood. Just as a tourist does not travel for the sake of traveling, a murderer does not kill for the sake of killing. A tourist travels because they expect to satisfy their urges and improve their wellbeing by traveling, and a murderer kills because they expect to satisfy their urges and improve their wellbeing by killing. It does not matter that one enjoys piña coladas while the other enjoys playing with blood. For both, the demise of another is a byproduct of their pleasure mechanism.

The intent argument also fails when the idea of the normal course of events is put under scrutiny. The normal course of events is frequently defined as what would happen if you do “nothing.” This is meaningless. If you sit around and stare at your phone all day, you are doing nothing productive, and you are doing nothing to prevent death, but you are not doing nothing. The normal course of events could be defined as what would happen if you were incapacitated by ignorance, unconsciousness, or death, but the link between the normal course of events and your moral obligations becomes unclear. Why does it matter what would happen if you were ignorant, unconscious, or dead when you are not?

Ultimately, the motivations of a murderer and a normal person are the same, and the normal course of events is no more than a fabrication used to deflect accountability for causing death.

"But it's not just me!"

The collectivity argument claims that the critical distinction between a murderer and a “normal” person is that the former is individually responsible for causing death, while the latter is collectively responsible.

Read more ⏷

Imagine there are 100 professional swimmers watching someone drown. Every professional swimmer knows (1) that they can save the drowning person without facing any appreciable consequences and (2) that none of the other professional swimmers are going to save the drowning person.

If no one intervenes, as part of a collective, every professional swimmer is “only” 1% responsible for the drowning, but the total responsibility is 100 times greater than if there were only one professional swimmer. Why? Because the presence of others only affects individual responsibility insofar as it affects the calculus of a decision. Since every professional swimmer fully believes (1) and (2), the presence of others is irrelevant. Every professional swimmer is a murderer.

Now, imagine there are 100 gang members ordered to carry out an assassination. Every gang member fully believes (1) that they cannot sabotage the assassination without being killed and (2) that none of the other gang members are going to sabotage the assassination.

Again, if no one intervenes, as part of a collective, every gang member is only 1% responsible for the assassination, but the total responsibility is 100 times greater than if there were only one gang member. In this hypothetical, however, the presence of others does affect the calculus of a decision. Because assassination and sabotage are both fully believed to result in death, every gang member is not a murderer in the same way every professional swimmer is a murderer. Indeed, if self-preservation is sufficient reason to kill, the gang members are not even murderers.

The morality of killing is a spectrum with those who expect no trade-offs from preventing death (e.g., the professional swimmers) on the immoral end and those who expect high trade-offs from preventing death (e.g., the gang members) on the moral end.

Now, consider the billions of people with unnecessarily high human footprints. It is possible for these people to eliminate their human footprints entirely—to donate more money, to donate more biomaterials, to emit less carbon, to have less children—but it is often not pleasurable. Usually, we call people who kill for pleasure “murderers.”

"But I didn't know!"

The ignorance argument claims that the critical distinction between a “normal” person and a murderer is that the former kills knowingly, while the latter kills unknowingly.

Read more ⏷

This line of reasoning is valid. If you are still ignorant after interacting with this website, you are still innocent. However, in my opinion, most of the ignorance surrounding our human footprints is willful.

Garfield, April 1989

"What about the animals?"

Is the immense suffering we inflict on them wrong?

Read more ⏷

No reasonable person who takes morality seriously in their dealings with human animals can refuse to do the same with non-human animals. To disregard the force of evolutionary theory by insisting that “we (humans) are so very special that we are the only conscious inhabitants on the face of the earth” amounts to a prejudice animal rights theorist Tom Regan called “human chauvinism.”

The primary objective of this website is to prove that there is no meaningful difference between a “normal” person and a murderer. However, it would be deeply anthropocentric to discuss only human footprints when most normal people are likewise responsible for the perpetuation of industries where, every year, hundreds of millions of non-human animals are used as tools for medical research and product testing; and hundreds of billions of mammals, birds, and fish live and die as cogs in intensive farming operations.

The following passage from Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation Now details the final torture endured by billions of chickens every year:

At the slaughterhouse, euphemistically called a "processing plant," the birds are taken off the truck and usually hung upside down, with their feet in shackles, on a moving conveyor belt. Chickens have pain receptors in their legs, and to hang them, fully conscious, upside down by their legs in a metal shackle is already a painful experience. The conveyor belt then takes them to a blade that will cut their throat. In most industrialized countries they are supposed to be stunned before that happens. The most common method of stunning, both in the United States and Europe, is for the conveyor belt to dip the birds into an electrified water bath. If the electric current is set too high, however, the birds may experience severe muscle contractions that adversely affect the quality of the meat; but if the current is too low, the birds will be paralyzed but not stunned. With the line between too high and too low being quite fine, and the commercial incentives in favor of ensuring that the meat is not spoiled, it is likely that many birds are not properly stunned. Some will have their throats cut while fully conscious, but others will also miss the blade. The conveyor belt then takes them into a tank of scalding water, intended to remove their feathers. Those birds that have not yet been stunned nor had their throats cut will die by drowning in scalding water.

Gruesome? Yes. Inhumane? Hardly.

Blood drains from a bird that has been stunned and had its throat cut

"Do I have to be perfect?"

Can I offset my human footprint instead of eliminating it entirely?

Read more ⏷

The simple answer is yes, you have to be perfect. If you accept the arguments presented on this website, you cannot expect to have “cheat days” where you reward yourself by killing people. The bigger question, however, is whether decisions are rooted in anything but selfishness and, consequently, whether decisions are morally relevant at all.

“Why don't you use a dictionary?”

Wouldn't it be more accurate?

Read more ⏷

There are two ways to refute the claim that there is no meaningful difference between a “normal” person and a murderer (someone who knowingly causes the death of another person without sufficient reason): You can argue (1) that a normal person does not fit the provided definition (e.g., the ignorance argument) or (2) that a murderer does not fit the provided definition (i.e., that the provided definition is incorrect).

The only purpose in contesting the definitions used on this website would be to pursue the second course of refutal. Of course, under “Counterarguments,” I have already refuted every relevant definition of “murderer” that meaningfully departs from mine that I am aware of, but if there are others or if there are mistakes in my work, please let me know (my contact information is listed below)!

Email

Do you have a unique counterargument? Do you have an unanswered question? Send it to killcalculator@gmail.com today!