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Alicorn comments on Unspeakable Morality - Less Wrong
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Comments (116)
I have to take serious issue with not finding chinchillas cute. What is wrong with you?
What is the qualitative difference in goodness between hypothetical useless, unloved, resource-draining, methane-farting future cows, and a species I assume it was fine and dandy to destroy: smallpox?
OK, I take back the bit about chinchillas. Google says they're cuter than I remember them being. Substitute, uhhh, boa constrictors.
Smallpox was known to actively cause severe harm to those it infected, and there wasn't really anything those people could have done to prevent infection. I think that outweighs any potential beneficial uses we might find for it in the future.
Smallpox harmed the people it infected; hypothetical useless unloved resource-draining methane-farting future cows (HUURDMFFC) harm the people who could benefit from the resources they divert and who want to live in a world with less methane. This seems like a quantitative difference to me, not a qualitative one.
I don't know about you, but I like snakes and I would be sad if boa constrictors went extinct.