ELI5- What’s the meaning of “The end justifies the means”?
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Generally it suggests that, if the result is for the greater good, then amoral steps that are deemed necessary to achieve it are actually moral to undertake. It is literally saying that the end result justifies the means used to *achieve* that result, whatever they may be.
For example, some people may consider the following justified by the end result:
* Lying to someone who trusts you to keep them safe, or to discourage them from making a bad decision.
* Overblowing or over-punishing a small transgression to discourage larger misconduct, or to punish an individual for a worse crime they escaped punishment on previously.
* Supporting new policies that have avenues of abuse of the innocent (which *will* come to pass), because in the vast majority of cases it protects the innocent or punishes the guilty who have largely gotten away with things previously.
* Wounding, detaining, or killing an individual to prevent worse harm to others.
* Medical trials (especially animal testing), that result in a net benefit towards the health and quality of life of mankind in the future, but in the present means an increase in suffering and death of subjects used in these trails that is not ‘necessary’.
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