No, I wasn't declaring it meaningless.

My (perhaps trivial) points were that all hypothetical thought experiments are necessarily conducted in Far mode, even when thought experiment is *about * simulating Near modes of thinking. Does that undermine it a little?

And - while all Thought Experiments are Far - Actual Experiements are Near.

I was illustrating that with what I hoped was an amusing anecdote -- the bizarre experience I had last week of having the trolley problem discussed with the fat man actually personified and present in the room, sitting next to me, and how that nudged the thought experiment into something just slightly closer to a real experiment.

It's easy to talk about sacrificing one person's life to save five others, but hurting his feelings by appearing to be rude or unkind, in order to to get to a logical truth was harder. This is somewhat relevant to the subject of the talk - decisions may be made emotionally and then rationalised afterwards.

Look, I wasn't hoping to provoke one of Eliezer's 'clicks', just to raise a weekend smile and to discuss scenario where lesswrong readers had no cached thought to fall back on.