I hit a cat with my car today while I was driving home. It ran out so fast that I had no chance of reacting, I hit it even though I hit the brakes really hard right away. Still, I probably didn't kill it - there was no blood on the street, the car, or the general area where the cat landed after the impact. The cat was gone too, so I guessed it walked away.

I didn't feel guilty about it because.. well, I did my best and hit it anyway. There was nothing I could have done. I know that people often blame themselves anyway after hitting living beings with their cars, even if it was outside their control, and yet that wasn't the case for me

How much they blame themselves seems to depend on how closely related the animal is to us - you could describe the different animals as being on a continuum of relatedness, which corresponds directly to how likely we are to feel guilty and to how bad the guilt will be when we accidentally kill them with our cars

1. if you run over a snail you won't give a shit about it - low end of the continuum
2. if you run over a bigger animal like hedgehog, you will maybe feel guilty
3. if you run over a cat or a dog, many people feel very guilty
4. if you run over a human, even worse a child most people seem to feel really guilty, many people will suffer from agonizing guilt for the rest of their lives - high end of the continuum

Now, under the assumption that all of these times there was nothing you could have done to prevent it from happening, I would describe guilt as an irrational feeling. Guilt is supposed to kick in when I did something wrong. But here, it would be the SITUATION that wronged YOU, it was outside of your control. Therefore, you didn't do anything wrong in particular, it was bad luck and guilt is unnecessary/misattributed.


So I was asking myself the following question:
Now that I know that I don't feel guilty when I hit a cat, would I feel guilty when I hit a child?
Mind that in any case, we define the situation as being outside of our control.


Let's look at it this way first: You just hit a child with your car and didn't feel guilty afterwards. If the continuum from above holds true (as I expect it to be for most people), we should expect you to also not feel bad about hitting a cat. This makes immediate sense. If we want to look at the relationship the other way around, it gets a bit more complicated.


You just hit a cat with your car.
Lets split the General Population in two Groups: People that feel guilty about hitting cats with their cars, and people that do not feel guilty about that.
Now, which group is more likely to contain the people that do not feel guilty about hitting children with their cars? The answer is obvious if you think about it: IF there is anyone that would feel guilty about hitting children, they would more likely to be in the group that also doesn't feel bad about hitting cats.

I just learned that I belonged to that group since I didn't feel guilty for hitting the cat. Therefore, my probability of not feeling guilty for hitting a kid has gone up.


For everyone that knows conditional probability:

P(FeelingGuiltyForHittingCat) = P(GuiltyCat)
P(FeelingGuiltyForHittingChild) = P(GuiltyChild)

P(NotGuiltyChild l NotGuiltyCat) > P(NotGuiltyChild)

Hitting something and knowing you've killed it are two different things, so no, you can't apply your experience here as you're less likely to feel guilt as you don't know if its dead. This would be more relevant if you knew for certain that the chat was dead, which is what the rest of us were discussing. If we then extend this logic to that of hitting (and killing) a child, you have killed another human being, intentionally or not, and you are therefore going to feel more guilty about it. You simply cannot compare the two as we don't view animals on the same level as humans in society, Railey.

Tae wrote:

Hitting something and knowing you've killed it are two different things, so no, you can't apply your experience here as you're less likely to feel guilt as you don't know if its dead. This would be more relevant if you knew for certain that the chat was dead, which is what the rest of us were discussing. If we then extend this logic to that of hitting (and killing) a child, you have killed another human being, intentionally or not, and you are therefore going to feel more guilty about it. You simply cannot compare the two as we don't view animals on the same level as humans in society, Railey.

I am convinced that the cat is alive, so we're going with hitting a cat/kid and not killing it as our basis for all comparisons. We won't compare hitting with killing, only killing with killing and hitting with hitting. In my case hitting with hitting. Although I am sure that the same logic can be expanded to comparing killing to killing

Anyway, the notion that you can not compare two things because they aren't on the same level is so abhorrently stupid, I'm calling the end of my debate with you right here and now.

I am well aware that cats and humans are on two different levels (d'uh?), that's the whole point of the continuum section above. Unless you can prove to me that the two are completely different in nature, like.. say apples and screwdrivers, which would make any sort of comparison nonsensical, I will not reply to you in this thread anymore. Or if you admit that you're making no sense and are willing to accept the legitimacy of the comparison.

If you have any further questions, look at the formula way at the bottom of the OP.

Railey2 wrote:

I am convinced that the cat is alive, so we're going with hitting a cat/kid and not killing it as our basis for all comparisons. We won't compare hitting with killing, only killing with killing and hitting with hitting. In my case hitting with hitting. Although I am sure that the same logic can be expanded to comparing killing to killing

...My point there was that your level of guilt you feel to the situation is obviously lessened if you know the victim is still alive in the situation. Do you understand that?
You have not killed the animal, so therefore you do not experience the "what if I had done X" or "could I have done X?" questions, do you? (...the same ones that are so stupid in your view...) Your experience does not apply to this hypothetical situation you are creating and so it isn't valid for you to be doing so.

Railey2 wrote:

Anyway, the notion that you can not compare two things because they aren't on the same level is so abhorrently stupid, I'm calling the end of my debate with you right here and now.

In what way is it? I've explained that the child is able to communicate its feelings and thoughts more so than the cat, and has more potential in life as well, how in the hell is that so stupid? They both have thought processes yes, but the cats are so much more basic when compared to that of a child, is that really so hard to grasp?
What does your example of apples and screwdrivers even mean? How are these two examples any different? To even say that I'm making no sense here is a foolish statement on your behalf, Railey, are you trying to say that many of the people who were involved in this discussion earlier are also spouting nonsense? Perhaps you are the one in the wrong here, have you considered that possibility?

God you're literally calling me stupid because I chose to take a different viewpoint to you. Are you not making assumptions of me and my character as a result of that?
For the record I never directly called you a shitty person, I said your points were similar to the mentality of one.

Railey2 wrote:

if you run over a snail you won't give a shit about it - low end of the continuum
if you run over a bigger animal like hedgehog, you will maybe feel guilty
if you run over a cat or a dog, many people feel very guilty
if you run over a human, even worse a child most people seem to feel really guilty, many people will suffer from agonizing guilt for the rest of their lives - high end of the continuum

Continuum spectrum is based on your views alone, so by presenting this as fact, we are talking in terms of your guilt and not any other persons or collective of persons. My claim can be proven simply by the following: people hate people love animals, people hate certain animals love other people, terrorists exist have no guilt outside their belief, psychopaths exist would kill person for killing their only friend (pet). None of those were excluded from the original argument, and if you assert that this argument pertains to specified multiple persons, those persons, however many of them, must come forth and confirm that this spectrum is accurate to their views. Otherwise, any of your arguments based on this premise would be certainly be contradictory via assertion of this spectrum on all persons.

And just pondering on what some random individual on the internet thinks and how that individual would react is less fun than pondering the morals of society because that pertains to all including me, and because I don't know that individual. Showing interest is rather abnormal at least in the public setting since it is natural for other random individuals not to care. The individual can claim any feelings about self as fact, given no past correlated action to feeling. Therefore, no argument exists to begin and it's a question of self identity you should figure out yourself.

but is the cat alive if you put it in a box

@Railey2 I don't think that it's very likely that the cat you hit was completely uninjured, and I wouldn't expect that most cats would be either if they were only hit. Being injured in the wild sounds to me like a surefire way to die fast, so even if you only hit the cat, there's a high probably it'll die much sooner than normal. Secondly, I'm fairly sure Tae agrees with your assessment that being hit is less terrible than being killed, since she basically repeated what you said before. Regarding Tae's point about comparability, I think she's just saying that of course cats < humans in terms of guilt; "it's so obvious as to be a tautology" rather than "you can't compare them because they're too dissimilar." Thirdly, I don't know why anybody would disagree with how you ordered your preference list of animals, but I guess abraker sort of has a point? It might be a good idea to have included a survey on whether that ordering fit in the post as well, and if you still want to do that you can just make a new post or whatever. Also, that whole last paragraph abraker wrote sounds like a non-sequitur to me, but maybe I'm just being dim.

An improvement to your list might also be something along the lines of this: plants =? harmful animals (mosquitoes) < prevalent insects < miscellaneous large animals < tamed animals < sentient life ...instead of giving specific examples of what you were talking about. I'm fairly confident I'd feel very very guilty about hitting anything, but I haven't had a situation come up yet, so I'm not >99%. That's about it.

(This was originally written in Discord and reformatted to make it slightly nicer-looking, though the content has not changed at all.)

How do you know how different things have to be before you cannot compare them?

How is the line drawn and why?

I learn that cats have 9 live or immortal cause i accidentally hit one cat before and they are alive and unscratch

Tae wrote:

They both have thought processes yes, but the cats are so much more basic when compared to that of a child, is that really so hard to grasp?

I don't think intelligence of the being getting hurt has anything to to with guilt.

Injuring a child or a mentally disabled person would create even more guilt even though their intelligence is lower.

Many people empathize with animals even more than they do with people because they can express their feelings to them without rejection.

abraker wrote:

Continuum spectrum is based on your views alone, so by presenting this as fact, we are talking in terms of your guilt and not any other persons or collective of persons. My claim can be proven simply by the following: people hate people love animals, people hate certain animals love other people, terrorists exist have no guilt outside their belief, psychopaths exist would kill person for killing their only friend (pet). None of those were excluded from the original argument, and if you assert that this argument pertains to specified multiple persons, those persons, however many of them, must come forth and confirm that this spectrum is accurate to their views. Otherwise, any of your arguments based on this premise would be certainly be contradictory via assertion of this spectrum on all persons.

My claim is that it works out that way for the vast majority of People, not for ALL People.

What you're saying is, that groups like P(GuiltyChild ∩ NotGuiltyCat) throw off the calculation.
P(GuiltyChild ∩ NotGuiltyCat) = Oddballs that feel guilty when they run over a cat but not when they run over a child.

And you're right, they DO throw off the calculation by a bit, but probably not enough for the whole thing to become invalid

Think about it like this:



The largest circle contains all People.
the medium circle contains all People that don't feel guilty for running over cats.
The smallest circle contains all People that don't feel guilty for running over humans.

The green are all people who feel guilty for running over both cat and human.
The yellow are people that feel guilty for running over children, but not cats.
The red are people that don't feel guilty at all, running over humans or cats.
The purple also don't feel guilty running over humans, but they DO feel guilty running over cats.


I learned that I'm at LEAST part of the medium circle, which makes it far more likely that I'm also part of the small circle. There is a small fraction that is part of the small circle BUT NOT of the medium circle (as you said), but I expect them to be neglegible.

If you run over a cat and don't feel bad, you know that you're either yellow or red.

If you run over a cat and do feel bad, you know that you're either green or purple.


Overall, being part of the medium circle makes it more likely to be part of the small circle as well, the purple is just too tiny in comparison to green, but the red isn't too tiny in comparison to the yellow.


This is probably the best way of visualizing it. If you have any questions, ask ahead.

The thing is, it's incredibly difficult to apply probability to a hypothetical situation like this, and yes, doing so looks rather insensitive.

Your perspective is not the only valid one here, Railey.

You hit the cat, probably breaking some of its bones and leaving it to die a slow death or giving it some permanent disability. Maybe you should feel guilty for not spending more time looking for it.

It's also wrong to say that you couldn't have done anything about it. You could have driven slower. You could have walked or rode a bike. All actions have some inherent risk involved.

B1rd wrote:

You hit the cat, probably breaking some of its bones and leaving it to die a slow death or giving it some permanent disability. Maybe you should feel guilty for not spending more time looking for it.

It's also wrong to say that you couldn't have done anything about it. You could have driven slower. You could have walked or rode a bike. All actions have some inherent risk involved.

It's unrealistic to ask of people to drive absolute lowest risk all the time. I was within the speed limit (bit below actually, going around 45km/h), and was watching the road with normal concentration.
That's how I and millions of other people always drive, how we're being expected to drive. You can't make me feel guilty for not being paranoid all the time, driving 20 below speed limit , and expecting a cat to jump in front of my car at all times. That's just madness.

I also couldn't have taken a bike, the destination was too far away. Also fuck that. Do you want to make me feel guilty for using a car now, like a normal human being?


Could the most cauteous and concentrated driver have avoided hitting the cat? Yeah maybe. But it's beside the point, because nobody can expect you to be that person at all times.
I also wouldn't have hit the cat if I had killed myself 10 years ago. Or sworn to never use cars because theres a chance i run over a cat with them. Equally beside the point. We have to stay realistic here.

I've spent enough time looking for it, trust me on that.

Railey2 wrote:

Equally beside the point. We have to stay realistic here.

Ah, but you see, with a situation like this, these are the sort of questions that go through your head - blaming yourself and thinking of things you could have done better, regardless of it being viable or not. That's how we work.

We feel guilty if we do something we feel wrong, regardless of if we could have prevented it or not, calling that stupid isn't really a good move as we all do it. well, most of us, anyway

Railey2 wrote:

B1rd wrote:

You hit the cat, probably breaking some of its bones and leaving it to die a slow death or giving it some permanent disability. Maybe you should feel guilty for not spending more time looking for it.

It's also wrong to say that you couldn't have done anything about it. You could have driven slower. You could have walked or rode a bike. All actions have some inherent risk involved.

It's unrealistic to ask of people to drive absolute lowest risk all the time. I was within the speed limit (bit below actually, going around 45km/h), and was watching the road with normal concentration.
That's how I and millions of other people always drive, how we're being expected to drive. You can't make me feel guilty for not being paranoid all the time, driving 20 below speed limit , and expecting a cat to jump in front of my car at all times. That's just madness.

I also couldn't have taken a bike, the destination was too far away. Also fuck that. Do you want to make me feel guilty for using a car now, like a normal human being?


Could the most cauteous and concentrated driver have avoided hitting the cat? Yeah maybe. But it's beside the point, because nobody can expect you to be that person at all times.
I also wouldn't have hit the cat if I had killed myself 10 years ago. Or sworn to never use cars because theres a chance i run over a cat with them. Equally beside the point. We have to stay realistic here.

I've spent enough time looking for it, trust me on that.

I'm not telling you you shouldn't have driven your car, I'm rebutting your logical method of making assertions based on the assumption that there was nothing you could have done. Since all actions have some risk to them, you can never make that assumption. You're just confusing societal standards empirical truth. You can make an argument whether the risks you took were justifiable but that's a different argument.

ok B1rd, so lets be more clear.

Nothing I could have done under the assumption that I was driving like a normal person (normal reaction time, normal concentration, normal speed).
I won't get into the Argument of whether or not driving like that is justifiable when compared to the risk, and I'm sure you have no interest either. Most People seem to agree that it is justifyable, as shown by the fact that there aren't any "CARS KILL, DONT USE CARS"-Demos on the street right now.

The cat is now stoned.

im sorry to derail this thread

This thread is now about puppies.

im high

goodnight kai

The real question is, why are we so attached to one person out of 7 billion

This thread is now about things to be learned from running over a | with your car.

But nobody came. ???? old forum dislikes me