komponisto comments on Shut Up and Divide? - Less Wrong

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

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

Comments (258)

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

Comment author: komponisto 16 February 2010 04:54:38PM 2 points [-]

Why would you say that when you have no idea what his H or his h were in the first place?

Well, I don't have "no idea" -- I have a probability distribution informed by experience.

Having too much concern for an individual is theoretically possible I suppose, but it's not a problem anyone is terribly likely to suffer from. The reason most people don't care about most other people is not the fact that the human population is large; it's the fact that most of that large population isn't psychologically close enough for them to care.

It's possible that utilitarian calculations could argue for downgrading one's level of concern for e.g. Amanda Knox -- but I'm far more inclined to suspect rationalization of pre-existing natural indifference on the part of someone who makes a claim like that.