jwdink comments on The Trolley Problem in popular culture: Torchwood Series 3 - Less Wrong
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It seems like you are seeing my replies as soldier-arguments for the object-level question about the sacrifice of children, stumped on a particular conclusion that sacrificing children is right, while I'm merely giving opinion-neutral meta-comments about the semantics of such opinions. (I'm not sure I'm reading this right.)
Preference defines what constitutes winning, your actions rank high in the preference order if they determine the world high in preference order. Preference can't be reduced to winning or actions, as these all are the sides of the same structure.
...so you're NOT attempting to respond to my original question? My original question was "what's irrational about not sacrificing the children?"
There is nothing intrinsically irrational about any action, rationality or irrationality depends on preference, which is the point I was trying to communicate. Any question about "rationality" of a decision is a question about correctness of preference-optimization. So, my reply to your original question is that the question is ill-posed, and the content of the reply was explanation as to why.
Okay, that's fine. So you'll agree that the various people--who were saying that the decision made in the show was the rational route--these people were speaking (at least somewhat) improperly?