contravariant comments on Suffering - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Tiiba 03 August 2009 04:02PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (92)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: contravariant 08 August 2015 04:21:55AM *  1 point [-]

People who require help can be divided into those who are capable of helping themselves, and those who are not. Such a position as yours would express the value preference that sacrificing the good of the latter group is better than letting the first group get unpaid rewards - in all cases. For me it's not that simple, the choice depends on the proportion of the groups, cost to me and society, and just how much good is being sacrificed. To make an extreme example, I would save someone's life even if this encourages other people to be less careful protecting theirs.