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CronoDAS comments on Shut Up and Divide? - Less Wrong
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Me too. I hear of a tragedy, and I think, "So what? People die every day."
Caring should be different than being surprised that it happened. If I stole $1 from you everyday I suspect you would still care every time I did it.
The reason I say this is because "So what?" applies to both surprise and caring. If I tell you the sun rose today you could reply, "So what?" You don't care, but in a surprised sense of the word, not in an sympathetic sense of the word.
Likewise, if you don't feel sympathetic by someone dying it is more likely because you don't have any emotional investment in them. If your best friend died you wouldn't respond by saying, "So what? People die every day."
In other words, you don't care because (a) it isn't a surprise and (b) you aren't emotionally invested in the tragedy.
I don't think so. Most people in the US pay more than $400/yr in taxes which support things they claim to despise (though not all the same things, of course). Yet the vast majority of Americans do not seem to be upset about paying taxes, something which they typically have no choice in except not to make the money.
Once you've been stealing money for a while, it's relatively easy to convince people that it's okay "because it's always been this way".
Indeed. Milton Friedman regretted his part in inventing income tax withholding, for this reason.
Awesome. Where do you live?
I sometimes try to imagine simple relevant situations such as being presented with two buttons:
Blue button: kill the man
Red button: save the man
I often find myself being able to choose very quickly, without being required to feel any excessive emotion about the matter. This way I know if I care for things, even though I might just feel like "So what?"
I had a whole grid of these at one point. They got pretty interesting after a while, but I never typed it all up and condensed it into anything useful.
A fun one: Is someone morally responsible for accidently pushing a button that will kill a crowd of people but then choosing not to stop it before it happens?