Lesswrongers will be encouraged to learn that the Torchwood characters were rationalists to a man and woman - there was little hesitation in agreeing to the 456's demands.
Are you joking? They weren't rationalists, they were selfish. There is a distinction. They were looking after there own asses and those of their families (note that the complicit politicians specifically excluded their own family's children from selection, regardless of 'worth').
children - or units as they were plausibly referred to
What do you mean by 'plausibly'? They were referred to as units in order to dehumanize them. Because the people referring to the children as such recognized that what they were doing was abhorrently wrong, and so had to mask the fact, even to themselves, by obscuring the reality of what they were discussing: the wholesale slaughter of their fellows.
... governments paying attention to round up the orphans, the refugees and the unloved - for the unexpectedly rational reason of minimising the suffering of the survivors
That's laughable. It had nothing to do with minimizing suffering, that was a rationalization. They were doing it for the same reason any government targets the vulnerable; because there are few willing to protect them and argue for them. It was pretty clear if you watched the show that the children being targeted were hardly 'unloved'.
You can't consider the scenario without considering the precedent that it would set. The notion that there are wide swaths of the population -- children, who've never even had the opportunity to truly prove themselves or do much of anything -- who are completely without worth and sacrificeable at the whim of the government is untenable in a society that values things like individuality, personal autonomy, the pursuit of happiness and, well, human life! They would not be saving humanity, they would be mutilating it.
The poster failed to mention that the sacrificed children were being sentence to an eternal fate which worse than death.
And there is a difference between the actions of the government and the actions of the main character. One of them was fighting the monsters. The others were the monster's business partners.
The poster failed to mention that the sacrificed children were being sentenced to an eternal fate which worse than death.
I really wonder what other LWers will say about this. Would you prefer to give one person huge disutility, or destroy humankind? For extra fun consider a 1/2^^^3 chance of 3^^^3 disutility to that one person.
Eliezer in particular considers his utility function to be provably unbounded in the positive direction at least, thinks we have much more potential for pain than pleasure, thinks destroying humankind has finite disutility on the ...
It's just possible that some lesswrong readers may be unfamiliar with Torchwood: It's a British sci-fi TV series, a spin-off from the more famous, and very long-running cult show Dr Who.
Two weeks ago Torchwood Series 3 aired. It took the form of a single story arc, over five days, shown in five parts on consecutive nights. What hopefully makes it interesting to rationalist lesswrong readers who are not (yet) Whovians was not only the space monsters (1) but also the show's determined and methodical exploration of an iterated Trolley Problem: in a process familiar to seasoned thought-experimenters the characters were tested with a dilemma followed by a succession of variations of increasing complexity, with their choices ascertained and the implications discussed and reckoned with.
An hypothetical, iterated rationalist dilemma... with space monsters... and monsters a great deal more scary - and messier - than Omega - what's not to like?
So, on the off chance that you missed it, and as a summer diversion from more academic lesswrong fare, I thought a brief description of how a familiar dilemma was handled on popular British TV this month, might be of passing interest (warning: spoilers follow)
The details of the scenario need not concern us too much here (and readers are warned not too expend too much mental energy exploring the various implausibilities, for want of distraction) but suffice to say that the 456, a race of evil aliens, landed on Earth and demanded that a certain number of children be turned over to them to suffer a horrible fate-worse-than-death or else we face the familiar prospects of all out attack and the likely destruction of mankind.
Resistance, it almost goes without saying, was futile.
The problems faced by the team could be roughly sorted into some themes
The Numbers dilemma - is it worth sacrificing any amount of children to save the rest?
The Quality dilemma: does it make any difference which children?
The choice dilemma: how should the sacrifical cohort be chosen?
The limits of human rationality: are there certain 'rational' decisions that are simply too much to expect a human being to be able to make?
Actually despite my jocular tone in the first paragraph I don't want to make too light of this series, as it was disturbing viewing.
Anyway: that being said: rationalist lesswrong community members may want to think dispassionately about the their answers before I reveal the conclusions that Russell T Davies (the writer) came to:
Numbers
Quality
Choice
This was handled by the politicians who considered two dimensions in the selection:
Rationality at the limit
On the question of 'how close' a straightforward evolutionary approach was used. Children of the decision-makers were safe, and grandchildren.
"And our nephews?" "Don't push it".
But the limits of rationality, it seems, are dependent upon gender: While it was recognised that no woman could be expected to agree to the rational sacrifice of her child, it was expected by some that men might have to, and in the end the main character - male - sacrificed a grandchild.
And that's it. Perhaps not a complete disposal of the trolley problem, but nevertheless an interesting excursion into the realms of philosphical dilemmas for a popular drama. Rationalism is a meme - pass it on.
(1) like many TV aliens: surprisingly able to construct spaceships without the benefit of an opposable thumb (2) Yes, that was actually the 1965 back-story.