Nick_Tarleton comments on Shut Up and Divide? - Less Wrong

60 Post author: Wei_Dai 09 February 2010 08:09PM

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Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 10 February 2010 04:22:32AM 3 points [-]

I work for an hour and get paid $10, but whoever bought the fruits of my labor just killed $10 worth of people

They almost certainly would have anyway. I really don't see why this matters. You're (presumably) not trying to minimize aggregate sinfulness or anything like that, you're trying to save lives. Therefore, you choose the action with the highest expected lives saved. It's that simple.

Comment author: MrHen 10 February 2010 04:28:07AM 2 points [-]

The puzzle has nothing to do with lives saved. The puzzle has to do with assigning moral responsibility.

But elsewhere I figured out my missing piece.