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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I agree with Psychohistoran. Moreover, the second case could as well be "Let's kill five hundred Koreans" - there is no purpose in killing those who are not the enemy.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

This really isn't a complicated problem. Civilian casualties as the result of an attack on a military target is considered acceptable. Civilian casualties caused for the sake of causing civilian casualties are not acceptable.

If the original hypothetical had some military purpose (say, we know 10 of these 510 family members are in fact top ranking al-Qaeda operatives, but we don't know which ones), then there would be a meaningful comparison between the two hypotheticals. As it stands, there does not appear to be much of a contradiction.

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