DonGeddis comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

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Comment author: DonGeddis 16 March 2010 10:06:06PM 27 points [-]

Proposed litmus test: infanticide.

General cultural norms label this practice as horrific, and most people's gut reactions concur. But a good chunk of rationality is separating emotions from logic. Once you've used atheism to eliminate a soul, and humans are "just" meat machines, and abortion is an ok if perhaps regrettable practice ... well, scientifically, there just isn't all that much difference between a fetus a couple months before birth, and an infant a couple of months after.

This doesn't argue that infants have zero value, but instead that they should be treated more like property or perhaps like pets (rather than like adult citizens). Don't unnecessarily cause them to suffer, but on the other hand you can choose to euthanize your own, if you wish, with no criminal consequences.

Get one of your friends who claims to be a rationalist. See if they can argue passionately in favor of infanticide.

Comment author: FAWS 16 March 2010 10:15:07PM 4 points [-]

Voted up, but I think abortion shouldn't be legal once the fetus is old enough to have brain activity other than for medical reasons (life of the mother), and I'm an unrepentant speciesist.

Comment author: taryneast 27 June 2011 01:42:48PM 2 points [-]

As I recall (I haven't gone to check), fetuses have "brain activity" about the same time they have a beating heart... ie about one week after conception. The brain activity regulates the heartbeat.

The problem with your definition is that it's very vague - it doesn't carve reality at the joints.

I myself prefer the "viability" test. If a foetus is removed form the mother.... and survives on it's own (yes, with life support) then it is "viable" and gets to live. If it's too undeveloped to live... then it doesn't. This stage is actually not very far prior to birth - somewhere around 34-36 weeks (out of 40) (again as I recall without having to look it up).

This is very similar to (but gives just a bit more wiggle room) to the "birth" line... ie it disentangles the needs of the mother from the needs of the child, and can be epitomised by the "which would you choose to save" test.

If you had to choose between the life of the mother or the life of the child: if the child is not viable without the mother - then there is no choice necessary: you choose the mother, because choosing the child will result in them both dying. But if the child is viable - then you actually have to choose between them as individual people.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 June 2011 01:48:34PM 2 points [-]

This stage is actually not very far prior to birth - somewhere around 34-36 weeks (out of 40) (again as I recall without having to look it up).

Actually a good bit earlier than that. Like 24, 25 weeks I think is the age where you get 50% survival (with intensive medical care, but you seem to say that's ok).

Comment author: taryneast 27 June 2011 04:07:17PM 0 points [-]

Ok... then I should clarify. If the mother has 100% chance to live, but the foetus has only 50% chance to live... and only on seriously intensive care... I do not consider that an equal chance to live.

I use the 34-36 week limit because women are encouraged to continue to 34-36 weeks if at all possible (based on what my mother tells me - who is an experienced midwife).

I guess the 34-36 weeks cutoff is, for me, a reasonable chance at living on just minimal life support. ie the mother and the child have a roughly equal chance of survival... thus it becomes a choice between them where external factors of who they are (or potentially could be) are the main issue - rather than simply based upon survival probability.

Comment author: Strange7 14 December 2013 05:56:51AM 1 point [-]

So, as technology improves and artificial substitutes become viable progressively earlier in the developmental process, you'll eventually be advocating adoption as an alternative to the morning-after pill?

Comment author: taryneast 29 December 2013 10:23:11AM 0 points [-]

If people are willing to pay for the cost of those artificial substitutes - then I would have no problem with it. If there are sufficient people wanting to adopt, too.

There is still a step between "being fine with it" and "advocating for" - that's turning a "could" into a "should" and you have not given any evidence why this should become a "should"

Right now I'd still not see a benefit for advocating for a child to be placed onto this kind of life-support if the parents do not want it. If the adoptive parents do, then no problems.

The issue with what FAWS is proposing is that "brain activity" is vague int he extreme. Ants have brain activity...

Comment author: CronoDAS 16 March 2010 10:17:33PM 3 points [-]

If I agreed with this logic, should I be reluctant to admit it here?

Comment author: byrnema 16 March 2010 11:04:02PM 2 points [-]

Agreeing with the logic is OK, but the problem with reductionism is that if you draw no lines, you'll eventually find that there's no difference between anything.

Thus the basic reductionist/humanist conflict: how does one you escape the 'logic' and draw a line?

Comment author: pengvado 16 March 2010 11:46:48PM 10 points [-]

Draw a gradient rather than a line. You don't need sharp boundaries between categories if the output of your judgment is quantitative rather than boolean. You can assign similar values to similar cases, and dissimilar values to dissimilar cases.

See also The Fallacy of Gray. Now you're obviously not falling for the one-color view, but that post also talks about what to do instead of staying with black-and-white.

Comment author: byrnema 17 March 2010 01:38:31AM *  7 points [-]

Sure. But I was referring to my worry that if you don't allow your values to be arbitrary (e.g., I don't care about protecting fetuses but I care about protecting babies), you may find you wouldn't have any. I guess I'm imagining a story in which a logician tries to argue me down a slippery slope of moral nihilism; there'll be no step I can point to that I shouldn't have taken, but I'll find I stepped too far. When I retreat uphill to where I feel more comfortable, can I expect to have a logical justification?

Comment author: pengvado 17 March 2010 03:52:19AM 16 points [-]

I'm not sure what "arbitrary" means here. You don't seem to be using it in the sense that all preferences are arbitary.

a story in which a logician tries to argue me down a slippery slope of moral nihilism

If the nihilist makes a sufficiently circuitous argument, they can ensure that there's no step you can point to that's very wrong. But by doing so, they will make slight approximations in many places. Each such step loses an incremental amount of logical justification, and if you add up all the approximations, you'll find that they've approximated away any correlation with the premises. You don't need to avoid following the argument too far, if you appropriately increase your error bars at each step.

In short: "similar" is not a transitive relation.

Comment author: simplicio 17 March 2010 04:30:44AM 3 points [-]

Each such step loses an incremental amount of logical justification, and if you add up all the approximations, you'll find that they've approximated away any correlation with the premises. You don't need to avoid following the argument too far, if you appropriately increase your error bars at each step.

In short: "similar" is not a transitive relation.

This was rather elegantly put.

Comment author: byrnema 18 March 2010 06:09:52PM 4 points [-]

From your answer, I guess that you do think we have 'justifications' for our moral preferences. I'm not sure. It seems to me that on the one hand, we accept that our preferences are arational, but then we don't really assimilate this. (If our preferences are arational, they won't have logical justifications.)

Comment author: gregconen 18 March 2010 06:42:56PM *  4 points [-]

I'm not sure what "arbitrary" means here. You don't seem to be using it in the sense that all preferences are arbitary.

That seemed to be exactly how he's using it. It would be how I'd respond, had I not worked it through already. But there is a difference between arbitrary in: "the difference between an 8.5 month fetus and a 15 day infant is arbitrary" and "the decision that killing people is wrong is arbitrary".

Yes, at some point you need at least one arbitrary principle. Once you have an arbitrary moral principle, you can make non-arbitrary decisions about the morality of situations.

There's a lot more about this in the whole sequence on metaethics.

Comment author: byrnema 18 March 2010 07:35:44PM *  6 points [-]

I am generally confused by the metaethics sequence, which is why I didn't correct Pengvado.

at some point you need at least one arbitrary principle. Once you have an arbitrary moral principle, you can make non-arbitrary decisions about the morality of situations.

Agreed, as long as you have found a consistent set of arbitrary principles to cover the whole moral landscape. But since our preferences are given to us, broadly, by evolution, shouldn't we expect that our principles operate locally (context-dependent) and are likely to be mutually inconsistent?

So when we adjust to a new location in the moral landscape and the logician asks up to justify our movement, it seems that, generally, the correct answer would be shrug and say, 'My preferences aren't logical. They evolved.'

If there's a difference in two positions in the moral landscape, we needn't justify our preference for one position. We just pick the one we prefer. Unless we have a preference for consistency of our principles, in which case we build that into the landscape as well. So the logician could pull you to an (otherwise) immoral place in the landscape unless you decide you don't consider logical consistency to be the most important moral principle.

Comment author: gregconen 18 March 2010 08:03:39PM 3 points [-]

But since our preferences are given to us, broadly, by evolution, shouldn't we expect that our principles operate locally (context-dependent) and are likely to be mutually inconsistent?

Yes.

I have a strong preferences for simple set of moral preferences, with minimal inconsistency.

I admit that the idea of holding "killing babies is wrong" as a separate principle from "killing humans is wrong", or holding that "babies are human" as a moral (rather than empirical) principle simply did not occur to me. The dangers of generalizing from one example, I guess.

Comment author: Alicorn 16 March 2010 10:19:07PM 22 points [-]

I like this test, with the following cautions:

The regrettability of abortion is connected to the availability of birth control, and so similarly, the regrettability of infanticide should be connected to the availability of abortion. A key difference is that while birth control may fail, abortion basically doesn't. I can think of a handful of reasons for infanticide to make sense when abortion didn't, and they're all related to things like unexpected infant disability the parents aren't prepared to handle, or sudden, badly timed, unanticipated financial/family stability disasters.

In either case, given that the baby doesn't necessarily occupy privileged uterine real estate the way a fetus must, I think it makes sense to push adoption as strongly preferred recourse before infanticide reaches the top of the list. Unlike asking a woman who wants an abortion to have the baby and give it up for adoption, this imposes no additional cost on her relative to the alternative.

Additionally, I think any but the most strongly controlled permission for infanticide would lead to cases where one parent killed their baby over the desire of the other parent to keep it. It seems obvious to me that either parent's wish that the baby live - assuming they're willing to raise it or give it up for adoption, and don't just vaguely prefer that it continue being alive while the wants-it-dead parent deal with its actual care - should be a sufficient condition that it live. I might even extend this to other relatives.

Comment author: byrnema 16 March 2010 11:13:29PM 3 points [-]

Don't unnecessarily cause them to suffer,

Aren't abortions unnecessarily painful? This is as strong an argument pro-life as pro-infanticide.

I agree there a continuum between conception and being, say, 2 years old that is only superficially punctuated by the date of birth. Yet our cultural norms are not so inconsistent...

General cultural norms label [infanticide] as horrific, and most people's gut reactions concur.

For example, many of these same people would find it horrific to kill a late-stage fetus. And they might still find it horrific to murder a younger fetus, but nevertheless respect the mother's choice in the matter.

Comment author: CronoDAS 16 March 2010 11:20:27PM *  22 points [-]

Basically, this is a variant on the argument from marginal cases; infants don't differ from relatively intelligent nonhuman animals in capabilities, so they ought to have the same moral status. If it's okay to euthanize your dog, it should also be okay to euthanize your newborn.

(The most common use of the argument from marginal cases is to argue that animals deserve greater moral consideration, and not that some humans deserve less, but one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens.)

Comment author: DonGeddis 17 March 2010 05:49:19PM 3 points [-]

Your parenthetical comment is the funniest thing I've read all day! The contrast with the seriousness of subject matter is exquisite. (You're of course right about the marginal cases thing too.)

Comment author: Jack 17 March 2010 06:36:37PM *  22 points [-]

(The most common use of the argument from marginal cases is to argue that animals deserve greater moral consideration, and not that some humans deserve less, but one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens.)

Cerca 1792 after Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Women a philosopher name Thomas Taylor published a reductio ad absurdum/ parody entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes which basically took Wollstonecrafts arguments for more gender equality and replaced women with animals. It reads more or less like an animal rights pamphlet written by Peter Singer.

Comment author: Larks 18 March 2010 12:15:08AM 3 points [-]

(The most common use of the argument from marginal cases is to argue that animals deserve greater moral consideration, and not that some humans deserve less, but one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens.)

This is a hand, this is an inviolate right to life...

Comment author: khafra 24 March 2010 06:12:36PM 5 points [-]

Professor Mordin Solus solves marginal cases by refusing to experiment on any species with at least one member capable of Calculus, which is a bit different from criticism, "argument from species normality."

Comment author: wnoise 24 March 2010 06:19:57PM *  10 points [-]

any species with at least one member capable of Calculus,

Any species with at least one member who has demonstrated to humans the capability of Calculus.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 24 March 2010 06:35:59PM *  15 points [-]

So it's perfectly acceptable to use a time machine to gather your experimental subjects from before the 17th century.

Also, once a human solves the problem of friendly AI, aliens will stop abducting us and accept us as moral agents.

Comment author: khafra 24 March 2010 07:26:58PM 5 points [-]

That sounds like a reasonable conclusion--compared to an intelligence capable enough of introspection and planning to make a friendly AI, the overwhelming majority of my actions arise purely from unreasoning instinct.

Comment author: Ishaan 05 October 2013 08:23:56PM *  -1 points [-]

Any species with at least one member who has demonstrated to humans the capability of doing calculus as per human notions of "doing calculus".

I don't remember the source, but I read a fiction somewhere in which an alien observed a few children playing catch. The alien commented on how impressed it was that they could do such sophisticated calculations so quickly at such a young age.

Comment author: lispalien 16 March 2010 11:32:29PM 8 points [-]

My mother made this argument to me probably when I was in high school. Given my position as past infanticide candidate, it was an odd conversation. For the record, she was willing to go up to two or six years old, I think.

And let us not forget the Scrubs episode she also agreed with: "Having a baby is like getting a dog that slowly learns to talk."

Comment author: wnoise 17 March 2010 06:27:02AM *  13 points [-]

I have said before "I'm a moderate on abortion -- I feel it should be okay up to the fifth trimester." While this does shock people into adjusting what boundaries might be considered acceptable, I no longer think it is something useful to say in most fora. Too much chance of offending people and just causing their brains to shut off.

Comment author: khafra 24 March 2010 05:50:19PM 3 points [-]

It should be safe to use on Philip K. Dick fan forums.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 March 2010 06:37:03PM 21 points [-]

My mother made this argument to me probably when I was in high school. Given my position as past infanticide candidate, it was an odd conversation.

Hey, now you know you were kept around because you were actually wanted, not out of a dull sense of obligation. It's like having a biological parent who is totally okay with giving up children for adoption - and stuck around!

Comment author: lispalien 25 March 2010 05:47:09AM *  6 points [-]

That's an interesting take. She clearly loves me and my siblings and has never hurt anyone to the best of my knowledge, besides. So, it wasn't an uncomfortable topic--only a bit of an odd position to be in.

Although, I also have to point out adoption does not carry the death penalty, so I can imagine a situation in which my hypothetical parent opts not to kill me because they think the fuzz will catch them.

Comment author: Multiheaded 16 March 2012 09:54:21AM *  1 point [-]

Hey, now you know you were kept around because you were actually wanted, not out of a dull sense of obligation.

Eliezer, your thought processes and emotions are quite a bit different from those of most currently living humans. And that mostly leaves you quite well-off, but you've always got to account for that before you say something like this.
How the hell do you know what others, especially children, would feel in an odd situation like that? Me, I know for sure that I'd MUCH rather have a cold/distant but dutiful and conscientous parent than one who could really, seriously plan to kill Pre-Me for their own convenience.

(If that was supposed to be a joke, I claim that it was in bad taste, just like an anti-AI LessWronger's joke about planning to assassinate you and your colleagues would be.)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 16 March 2012 12:53:05PM 0 points [-]

Can you generalize your claim a bit?

I mean, if the general form of your claim is that a joke whose punchline is "your parents wanted you" is in bad taste just as a joke whose punch line is "I'm going to kill you" is, I simply disagree. I find this unlikely, I just mention it because that's the vast difference between the two examples that jumped out at me.

If the general form of your claim is that a joke that mentions the (unactualizable) possibility of my infanticide is in bad taste just as a joke that mentions the (thus-far-unactualized, but still viable) possibility of my assassination, I also disagree, though I have more sympathy for the claim. I find this more likely.

If it's something else, I might agree.

Of course, if you don't actually mean to make a general claim about what is or isn't in bad taste, but rather to assert somewhat indirectly that references to infanticide upset you and you'd rather not read them, that's a whole different kettle of fish and my question is meaningless.

Comment author: Multiheaded 16 March 2012 01:02:54PM *  0 points [-]

Jokes aren't only about punchlines; here Eliezer was talking about how the (apparently REAL) fact that a murder was contemptated by the guy's own mother ended up having an upside.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 16 March 2012 01:59:21PM 1 point [-]

Yes, that's true, he was indeed talking about that.
I infer that your claim is that talking about that is in sufficiently bad taste to be worth calling out.
Thanks for clarifying.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 17 March 2010 08:29:54PM 6 points [-]

Sounds like it would be interesting to have your mother make some comments on LW, if you think she would be interested.

Comment author: lispalien 25 March 2010 05:37:04AM 2 points [-]

That's very unlikely, I think. She's not interested in rationalism.

Comment author: Jack 16 March 2010 11:41:52PM *  11 points [-]

I'll be the first to disagree outright.

First, when a woman is pregnant but will be unable to raise her child we do not force a woman to give birth to give up the baby for adoption. This is because bringing a child to term is a painful, expensive and dangerous nine-month ordeal which we do not think women should be forced into. In what possible circumstances is infanticide ethically permissible when the baby is born, the woman has already paid the cost of pregnancy and giving birth, and adoption is an option?

In general, I'm not sure it follows from the fact that persons aren't magic that persons are less valuable than we thought. Maybe babies are just glorified goldfish. Maybe they aren't valuable in the way we thought they were. But I haven't seen that evidence.

Comment author: goodside 17 March 2010 11:59:59AM *  0 points [-]

Due to a severe birth defect, the baby is profoundly mentally retarded, will suffer severe pain its entire life, and will most likely not live to see its fifth birthday.

Unfortunately, thus phrased it fails as a litmus test. For better discrimination, leave out the part about childhood death, then the pain. Then, if you're adventurous, the retardation.

Comment author: Jack 17 March 2010 06:20:32PM 3 points [-]

Once you've left out the pain I no longer think killing the baby is ethically permissible. And I don't see how knowing that people don't have souls alters my position.

Comment author: DonGeddis 17 March 2010 07:01:57PM 3 points [-]

Most people's moral gut reactions say that humans are very important, and everything else much less so. This argument is easier to make "objective" if humans are the only things with everlasting souls.

Once you get rid of souls, making the argument that humans have some special moral place in the world becomes much more difficult. It's probably an argument that is beyond the reach of the average person. After all, in the space of "things that one can construct out of atoms", humans and goldfish are very, very close.

Comment author: Hook 17 March 2010 07:09:21PM 3 points [-]

I think "making the argument that humans have some special moral place in the world" in the absence of an eternal soul is very easy for someone intelligent enough to think about how close humans and goldfish are "in the space of 'things that one can construct out of atoms.'"

Comment author: byrnema 18 March 2010 05:35:02PM 1 point [-]

Would you please share? I would really, really like to know how the argument that "humans have some special moral place in the world" would work.

Comment author: mattnewport 18 March 2010 05:36:50PM 1 point [-]

Humans are the only animals that seem to be capable of understanding the concept of morality or making moral judgements.

Comment author: Strange7 14 December 2013 05:45:30AM 0 points [-]

Morality is complicated and abstract. Maybe cetaceans, chimps, and/or parrots have some concept of morality which is simply beyond the scope of the simple-grammar, concrete-vocabulary interspecies languages so far developed.

Comment author: Hook 18 March 2010 07:22:33PM 0 points [-]

Show me someone who actually needs to be convinced. Just about everyone acts as if that is true. One could argue that they are just consequentialists trying to avoid the bad consequences of treating people as if they are not morally special. I'm not even sure that is the psychological reality for psychopaths though.

Also, a corollary of what Matt said, if humans aren't morally special, is anything?

Comment author: RobinZ 18 March 2010 08:30:25PM 2 points [-]

The question might be less "do humans have some special moral place in the world" than "do human beings have some special moral place in the world". For example: are we privileging humans over cows to an excessive extent?

Comment author: Hook 18 March 2010 08:38:53PM *  5 points [-]

Leaving aside the physical complications of moving cows, I think most vegetarians would find the decision to push a cow onto the train tracks to save the lives of four people much easier to make than pushing a large man onto the tracks, implying that humans are more special than cows.

EDIT: The above scenario may not work out so well for Hindus and certain extreme animal rights activists. It may be better to think about pushing one cow to save four cows vs. one human to save four humans. It seems like the cow scenario should be much less of a moral quandary for everyone.

Comment author: Jack 17 March 2010 07:29:19PM 9 points [-]

I like what Hook wrote. If I believed that babies were valuable because they have souls and then was told, "no they don't have souls", I might for a while value them less. But it has been a very long time since I believed in souls and the value I assign to babies is no longer related at all to my belief about souls (if it ever was).

After all, in the space of "things that one can construct out of atoms", humans and goldfish are very, very close.

Sure, they just don't resemble each other in many morally significant ways (the exception, perhaps, being some kind of experience of pain). There is no reason to think the facts that determine our ethical obligations make use of the same kinds of concepts and classifications we use to distinguish different configurations of atoms. Humans and wet ash are both mostly carbon and water, and so have a lot more in common than, say, the Sun. But wet ash and the sun and share more of the traits we're worried about when we're thinking about morality. The same goes for aesthetic value, if we need a non-ethics analogy.

Comment author: simplicio 17 March 2010 04:03:57AM *  31 points [-]

Once you've used atheism to eliminate a soul, and humans are "just" meat machines, and abortion is an ok if perhaps regrettable practice ...

Kudos to you for forthrightness. But em... no. Ok, first, it seems to me you've swept the ethics of infanticide under the rug of abortion, and left it there mostly unaddressed. Is an abortion an "ok if regrettable practice?" You've just assumed the answer is always yes, under any circumstances.

I personally say "definitely yes" before brain development (~12 weeks I think), "you need to talk to your doctor" between 12 and 24 weeks, and "not unless it's going to kill you" after 24 weeks (fully functioning brain). Anybody who knows more about development is welcome to contradict me, but those were the numbers I came up with a few years ago when I researched this.

If a baby/fetus has a mind, in my books it should be accorded rights - more and more so as it develops. I fail to see, moreover, where the dividing line ought to be in your view. Not to slippery-slope you but - why stop at infants?

*(Also note that this is a first-principles ethical argument which may have to be modified based on social expedience if it turns into policy. I don't want to encourage botched amateur abortions and cause extra harm. But those considerations are separate from the question of whether infants have worth in a moral sense.)

Once you've used atheism to eliminate a soul, and humans are "just" meat machines...

This gave me a nasty turn, because probably the most annoying idea religious people have is that if we're "just" chemicals, then nothing matters. One has to take pains to say that chemicals are just what we're made of. We have to be made out of something! :) And what we're made of has precisely zero moral significance (would we have more worth if we were made out of "spirit"?).

I mean, I could sit here all day and tell you about how you shouldn't read "Moby Dick," because it's just a bunch of meaningless pigment squiggles on compressed wood pulp. In a certain very trivial sense I am absolutely right - there is no "élan de Moby Dick" floating out in the aether somewhere independent of physical books. On the other hand I am totally missing the point.

Comment author: DonGeddis 17 March 2010 05:56:29PM 15 points [-]

Is an abortion an "ok if regrettable practice?" You've just assumed the answer is always yes, under any circumstances.

Sorry, you have a point that my test won't apply to every rationalist.

The contrast I meant was: if you look at the world population, and ask how many people believe in atheism, materialism, and that abortion is not morally wrong, you'll find a significant minority. (Perhaps you yourself are not in that group.)

But if you then try to add "believes that infanticide is not morally wrong", your subpopulation will drop to basically zero.

But, rationally, the gap between the first three beliefs, and the last one, is relatively small. Purely on the basis of rationality, you ought to expect a smaller dropoff than we in fact see. Hence, most people in the first group are avoiding the repugnant conclusion for non-rational reasons. (Or believing in the first three, for non-rational reasons.)

If you personally don't agree with the first three premises, then perhaps this test isn't accurate for you.

Comment author: MugaSofer 10 October 2012 12:43:59PM 1 point [-]

So your point is that anyone who feels there is a moral difference between infanticide and abortion is irrational?

Because most pro-lifers already say that, in my experience.

Comment author: wnoise 20 March 2010 05:42:30AM 11 points [-]

If a baby/fetus has a mind, in my books it should be accorded rights - more and more so as it develops. I fail to see, moreover, where the dividing line ought to be in your view. Not to slippery-slope you but - why stop at infants?

The standard answer is that at that point there is no longer a conflict with the rights of the women whose body the infant was hooked into. We don't generally require that people give up their bodily autonomy to support the life of others.

Comment author: simplicio 20 March 2010 07:00:19AM 4 points [-]

We don't generally require that people give up their bodily autonomy to support the life of others.

The complication here is that a responsible, consenting adult tacitly accepts giving up her bodily autonomy (or accepts a risk of doing so) when she has sex. That's precisely the same reason men are required to pay child support even if they didn't wish for a pregnancy. (Yes, I see the asymmetry; yes, it sucks).

Case-by-case reasoning is probably a good thing in these circs, but unless the mother was not informed (minor/mental illness) or did not consent, then the only really tenable reason for a late-term abortion I can think of is health. In which case the relative weighing of rights is a tricky business, a buck I will pass to doctors, patients & hospital ethics boards.

Comment author: wnoise 20 March 2010 07:57:37AM *  6 points [-]

but unless the mother was not informed (minor/mental illness) or did not consent,

This is already a significant retreat from your previously stated position. ("not unless it's going to kill you" after 24 weeks)

The complication here is that a responsible, consenting adult tacitly accepts giving up her bodily autonomy (or accepts a risk of doing so) when she has sex.

That's a hell of an assertion. I don't really see any reason to accept it as other than a normative statement of what you wish would happen.

That's precisely the same reason men are required to pay child support even if they didn't wish for a pregnancy. (Yes, I see the asymmetry; yes, it sucks).

As you say, there is an asymmetry. Garnishing a wage is a bit different, and seems appropriate to me.

Case-by-case reasoning is probably a good thing in these circs,

Yes, it is, so long as it is reasoning rather than assertions that this case is different. We have to specify how it is different, and how those differences make a difference. The easiest way for me to do this is to use analogies. This is dangerous of course, as one must keep in mind that they can ignore relevant differences while emphasizing surface similarities.

So, in this case the relevant specialness you're calling out is that a risky activity was knowingly engaged in that created a person who needs life support for some time, as well as care and feeding far after that. So I'm going to try to set up an analogous situation, but without sex being the act (which I think is irrelevant) coming into the mix. This will also mean another difference: the person will not be "created" except metaphorically from a preëxisting person. I personally don't see how that would be relevant, but I suppose it is possible for others to disagree.

Suppose a person is driving, and crashes into a pedestrian. This ruptures the liver of the pedestrian. A partial transplant of the driver's liver will save the pedestrian's life. Is the driver expected to donate their liver? Should it be required by law?

Note that the donor's death rate for this operation is under 1%. When we compare this to the statistics for maternal death, we see it is similar to WHO's 2005 estimate of world average of 900 per 100,000, though developed regions have it far lower at 9 per 100000.

Comment deleted 20 March 2010 09:56:31AM [-]
Comment author: simplicio 20 March 2010 09:11:24PM 5 points [-]

Just an example: In Austria by default all deceased people are potential donors -- you have to file an explicit opt-out.

I am very much in favour of this sort of policy; it would do no end of good.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 22 April 2010 06:26:41AM *  0 points [-]

Just an example: In Austria by default all deceased people are potential donors -- you have to file an explicit opt-out.

I am very much in favour of this sort of policy; it would do no end of good.

The effect of pretending to have opt-out organ donation is small. Austria is unique in really having opt-out organ donation (everywhere else, next of kin decide in practice), so it's hard to judge the effect, but it's not an outlier. In the 90s, Spain became the high outlier and Italy ceased being the low outlier, so rapid change is possible without doing anything ethically sensitive. graph. More Kieran Healy links here.

Comment author: BarbaraB 18 April 2012 03:12:14PM 0 points [-]

An interesting article.

"Reform of the rules governing consent is often accompanied by an overhaul and improvement of the logistical system, and it is this—not the letter of the law—that makes a difference. Cadaveric organ procurement is an intense, time-sensitive and very fluid process that requires a great deal of co-ordination and management. Countries that invest in that layer of the system do better than others, regardless of the rules about presumed and informed consent."

In our country, we have an opt-out donation, but I guess the relatives can have a veto. I have seen a physician on TV, who said some scary things openly. Our doctors are standardly overworked and underpayed. Imagine a doctor, who, towards the end of the long shift, sees a patient dying with some of the organs intact. If he decides to report the availability of the organs, he creates an extra, several hours work for himself and others, paperwork included. There is either none or very little financial reward for reporting the organs, I do not remember exactly. They might feel heroic for the first couple of times, but, eventually, they resign and stop making these reports, after they work long enough. I have seen this on TV cca 3 years ago, do not know the current situation.

Comment author: simplicio 20 March 2010 09:09:11PM 4 points [-]

This is already a significant retreat from your previously stated position. ("not unless it's going to kill you" after 24 weeks)

Is it? I suppose it is. I contain multitudes. No, honestly, I just didn't name all my caveats in the previous post (my bad). Clearly there are two people's interests to take into consideration here. Also, as I noted, that was an ethical rather than legal argument. I don't have any strong opinions about what the law should do wrt this question.

That's a hell of an assertion. I don't really see any reason to accept it as other than a normative statement of what you wish would happen.

I don't think it's unreasonable, although you're right it's not a fact statement. But I think it's a fairly well-established principle of ethics & jurisprudence that informed consent implies responsibility. Nobody has to have unprotected sex, so if you (a consenting adult) do so, any reasonably foreseeable consequences are on your shoulders.

Suppose a person is driving, and crashes into a pedestrian. This ruptures the liver of the pedestrian. A partial transplant of the driver's liver will save the pedestrian's life. Is the driver expected to donate their liver? Should it be required by law?

It's a reasonably good analogy I guess. There are two separate questions here: what should the law do, and what should the driver do. I don't think anybody wants the law to require organ donations from people who behave irresponsibly. However, put in the driver's shoes, and assuming the collision was my fault, I would feel obligated to donate (if, in this worst-case scenario, I am the only one who can).

There is a slight disanalogy here though, which is that an abortion is an act, whereas a failure to donate is an omission. It's like the difference between throwing the fat guy on the tracks and just letting the train hit the fat guy.

Comment author: BarbaraB 16 April 2012 10:53:58AM 2 points [-]

"Suppose a person is driving, and crashes into a pedestrian. This ruptures the liver of the pedestrian. A partial transplant of the driver's liver will save the pedestrian's life. Is the driver expected to donate their liver? Should it be required by law?"

For organ transplantations, the body biochemistries of the organ donor and acceptor must be somewhat compatible, otherwise the transplanted organ gets rejected by the immune system of the acceptor. The best transplantation results are between the identical twins. For unrelated people, there are tests to estimate the compatibility of organs, and databases. A conclusion: The driver is not generally expected to donate their liver, because in the majority of the cases, it would not help the victim.

Imagine an alternate universe, where all the human bodies are highly compatible for transplantation purposes. - Yes, I believe it might become a social norm in this alternate universe, or even a law, that the driver must donate their liver to the victim.

Comment author: Jiro 02 December 2013 04:51:40PM -1 points [-]

In the abortion example, the fetus 1) is created already attached and ending ongoing life support may not be the same as requiring that someone who is not providing it provide it, 2) needs life support for an extended period, and 3) can only use the life support of one person.

Comment author: Strange7 14 December 2013 05:35:40AM 0 points [-]

The driver could instead be made responsible for the victim's exact medical costs or some fraction thereof, in addition to any punitive or approximated damages. This would provide adequate incentive to seek out ways to reduce those costs, including but not limited to a voluntary donation on the part of the driver or someone who owes the driver a favor.

Comment author: thomblake 10 October 2012 06:11:24PM 2 points [-]

The complication here is that a responsible, consenting adult tacitly accepts giving up her bodily autonomy (or accepts a risk of doing so) when she has sex.

The complication there is that on the standard view, one cannot give up one's bodily autonomy permanently. You cannot sell yourself into slavery. The pregnant person always has the right to opt-out of the contract.

Though the fetus would presumably be able to get damages. I guess those get paid to the next-of-kin.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 10 October 2012 06:35:35PM 4 points [-]

I guess those get paid to the next-of-kin.

Upvoted entirely for this line, which made me spit coffee when it finally registered.

Comment author: MugaSofer 10 October 2012 12:53:16PM 0 points [-]

We don't generally require that people give up their bodily autonomy to support the life of others.

We don't?

In what situation, exactly, do we fail to do this? I can't think of any other real-world situation. I can imagine counterfactual ones, sure, but I'm fairly certain most people see those as analogies for abortion and respond appropriately.

Comment author: wnoise 10 October 2012 03:43:31PM 2 points [-]

We don't, for instance, require people to donate redundant organs, nor even blood. Nor is organ donation mandatory even after death (prehaps it should be).

What are some cases where we do require people to give up their bodily autonomy?

Comment author: TimS 10 October 2012 05:54:45PM 2 points [-]

Mandatory drug testing?

Comment author: wnoise 12 October 2012 06:11:39AM 1 point [-]

That's the big one I can think of, and this usually arises in a very different context where it's easy to dehumanize those forced to take such tests: alleged criminals and children.

(Even in these contexts, peeing in a cup or taking a breathalyzer is quite a bit less severe than enduring a forced pregnancy. Mandatory blood draws for DUIs do upset a signifianct number of people. How you feel about employment tests and sports doping might depend on how you feel about economic coercion and whether it's truly "mandatory".)

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2013 03:05:31AM 0 points [-]

In the first month of pregnancy, right, but in the seventh month you can Caesarean the baby out of the mother and put it into an incubator, can't you?

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2013 05:47:43AM 0 points [-]

Not without some risk to both, the exact amounts depending on the situation..

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2013 05:53:38AM 0 points [-]

(I'm assuming that by “some” you mean ‘larger than that of either abortion or natural childbirth’, otherwise it wouldn't be relevant. Right?)

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2013 09:21:14AM 1 point [-]

Smaller would be relevant too, for the opposite reason.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 March 2010 01:19:04AM *  4 points [-]

.

Comment author: Morendil 17 March 2010 09:15:06AM 26 points [-]

Time of birth serves as a bright line.

Comment author: ciphergoth 17 March 2010 10:15:21AM 12 points [-]

Very much agreed. This is also why we place much more moral value in the life of a severely brain-damaged human than a more intelligent non-human primate.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 March 2010 06:31:14PM 28 points [-]

Despite some jokes I made earlier, things that could arguably depend on values don't make good litmus tests. Though I did at one point talk to someone who tried to convert me to vegetarianism by saying that if I was willing to eat pork, it ought to be okay to eat month-old infants too, since the pigs were much smarter. I'm pretty sure you can guess where that conversation went...

Comment author: ata 17 March 2010 09:52:27PM 28 points [-]

I'm pretty sure you can guess where that conversation went...

You started eating month-old infants?

Comment author: ciphergoth 18 March 2010 09:00:14AM 10 points [-]

I'm imagining this conversation while you're both holding menus...

In seriousness, there are good instrumental reasons not to allow people to eat month-old infants that are nothing to do with greatly valuing them in your terminal values.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 19 March 2010 09:38:47PM 1 point [-]

Both menus being "vegetarian and non vegetarian" or "pork menu and baby menu"? :)

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 19 March 2010 09:38:14PM 14 points [-]

Option zero: "There's an interesting story I once wrote..."

Option one: "Well then, I won't/don't eat pork. But that doesn't mean I won't eat any animals. I can be selective in which I eat."

Option two: "mmmmm... babies."

Option three: "Why can't I simply not want to eat babies? I can simply prefer to eat pigs and not babies"

Option four: "Seems like a convincing argument to me. Okay, vegetarian now." (after all, technically you said they tried, but you didn't say the failed. ;))

Option five: "actually, I already am one."

Am I missing any (somewhat) plausible branches it could have taken? More to the point, is one of the above the direction it actually went? :)

(My model of you, incidentally, suggests option three as your least likely response and option one as your most likely serious response.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 March 2010 10:59:15PM 29 points [-]

Well, not quite option two, but yes, "You make a convincing case that it should be legal to eat month-old infants." One person's modus ponens is another's modus tollens...

Comment author: Desrtopa 29 May 2011 04:22:56PM 11 points [-]

I actually did a presentation arguing for the legality of eating babies in a Bioethics class.

And I don't eat pigs, on moral grounds.

Comment author: DanielLC 18 March 2012 11:54:26PM *  11 points [-]

Option six: "I was a vegetarian, but I'm okay with eating babies, and if pigs are just as smart, it should be okay to eat them too, so you've convinced me to give up vegetarianism."

This reminds me of the elves in Dwarf Fortress. They eat people, but not animals.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 March 2010 01:09:42AM 3 points [-]

this is sounding like a copout....

Comment author: Fallible 12 December 2011 05:08:56AM 2 points [-]

It isn't a question of current intelligence, it's a question of potential. Pigs will never grow beyond human-infant-level comprehension. Human babies will eventually become both sapient and sentient.

Saying a baby and a pig can be considered equally intelligent is like saying a midget and an 11-year-old of the same height are equally likely to become basketball players.

Comment author: pedanterrific 12 December 2011 05:33:26AM 15 points [-]

No, saying a baby and a pig can be considered equally intelligent is like saying a midget and an 11-year-old can be considered equally tall.

Comment author: Baughn 26 January 2012 01:06:20AM 1 point [-]

How about fertilized egg cells?

Caviar made from fertilized human egg cells, yum.

Comment author: MugaSofer 05 November 2012 09:20:12AM 2 points [-]

That guy clearly asked you those questions in the wrong order.

  • Do you believe killing animals for food is OK?
  • Killing animals for food is the same as eating babies!
  • Do you believe killing babies for food is OK?

... is obviously going to activate biases leading to the defense of killing animals for food, whether by denying they are equivalent or claiming to accept killing children for food. Thus the chance of persuading someone eating babies is morally acceptable depends on how strongly you argue the second point.

However...

  • Do you believe killing babies for food is OK?
  • Killing animals for food is the same as eating babies!
  • Do you believe killing animals for food is OK?

... leads to the opposite bias, as if the listener cannot refute your second point they must convert to vegetarianism or visibly contradict themselves.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 17 March 2010 08:34:11PM 14 points [-]

A key point is that they don't need to advocate the legalization of infanticide, they just need to be able to cogently address the arguments for and against it. Personally, I think that in the US at this time optimal law might restrict abortion significantly more than it currently does and also that in many past cultural contexts efforts to outlaw or seriously deter infanticide would have been harmful. Just disentangling morality from law competently gets a person props.

Comment author: Clippy 17 March 2010 11:20:32PM 13 points [-]

Infanticide and abortion are okay, as long as doing so increases paperclip production.

However, infanticide and abortion are obviously not alone in that respect.

Comment author: mattnewport 17 March 2010 11:25:54PM 26 points [-]

How do you feel about the destruction of a partially bent piece of steel wire before it has been bent fully into paperclip shape?

Comment author: Clippy 17 March 2010 11:29:20PM 26 points [-]

Is that some kind of threat???

Comment author: Strange7 18 March 2010 12:51:48AM 5 points [-]

I'd say the primary value of an infant is the future value of an adult human minus the conversion cost. Adult humans can be enormously valuable, but sometimes, the expected benefits just can't match the expected costs, in which case infanticide would be advisable.

However, both costs and benefits can vary by many orders of magnitude depending on context, and there's no reliable, generally-applicable method to predict either. No matter how bad it looks, someone else might have a more optimistic estimate, so it's worth checking the market (that is, considering adoption).

Comment author: Gurkenglas 02 December 2013 09:02:19AM *  0 points [-]

Is it acceptable to assume that the conversion cost up to a newborn is less than the rest of the way to an adult? (Think this through before reading on, to avoid biased thinking about the above (This is called "Meditate", right?)) Given that, wouldn't a rich excentric that commits to either spend a pool of money on paying people to roll boulders up and down a hill or on raising the next child he makes you pregnant with cause you to not be allowed to say no? (Edited for clarity)

Comment author: hyporational 02 December 2013 11:29:12AM 0 points [-]

Is it acceptable to assume that the conversion cost up to a newborn is less than the rest of the way to an adult?

It quite obviously is.

Given that, wouldn't a rich excentric that commits to either spend a pool of money on paying people to roll boulders up and down a hill or on raising your child cause you to not be allowed to refuse him?

If you mean as an alternative to infanticide, definitely. What's your point?

Comment author: Gurkenglas 02 December 2013 01:36:07PM *  0 points [-]

What I meant to say is that this complete stranger wants to have a child with Strange7 (for this hypothetical Strange7 can get pregnant) and it would be as wrong/illegal for Strange7 to not do so as late abortion or infanticide would be. (Edited grandparent for clarity)

Comment author: Strange7 14 December 2013 04:53:31AM 0 points [-]

If this hypothetical rich person is able and willing to cover all the costs of me bearing a child and the child being raised, they can draft a contract and present it to me. What greater good would be served by making it illegal for me to refuse? Such a law would weaken my negotiating position, increasing the chances that the rich eccentric would be able to avoid internalizing some of the long-term costs and/or that I would be put in the position of having to give up some marginally more lucrative prospect in order to avoid the legal penalty.

I'd rather not try to derive the full ethical calculus of abusive relationships and rape from first principles, but i can point you at some people who've studied the field enough to come up with excellent working approximations for most real-world cases.

Comment author: Rain 19 March 2010 06:47:35PM *  5 points [-]

Real world test of human value along similar lines: Ashley X.

Comment author: wedrifid 19 March 2010 11:16:00PM 8 points [-]

Don't unnecessarily cause them to suffer, but on the other hand you can choose to euthanize your own, if you wish, with no criminal consequences.

Yes, I should also be allowed to kill adults. Especially if they have it coming. After all, the infant still has a chance to grow up to make a worthwhile contribution while there are many adults that are clearly a waste of good oxygen or worse!

Comment author: taw 23 July 2011 10:51:07AM 13 points [-]

That's an amusing example because infanticide was extremely common among human cultures, so all good cultural relativists should be fine with this practice.

Usually there was a strong distinction between actually killing a baby (extremely wrong thing to do), and abandoning it to elements (acceptable). I'm not talking about any exotic cultures, ancient Greece and Rome and even large parts of Christian Medieval Europe practiced infant abandonment. There are even examples of Greek and Roman writers noting how strange it is that Egyptians and Jews never kill their children - perfect stuff for any cultural relativists. It was only once people switched from abandoning infants to elements to abandoning them at churches when it ceased being outright infanticide.

Anyway, pretty much the only reason babies are cute is as defense against abandonment. This shows it was never anything exceptional and was always a major evolutionary force. By some estimates up to 50% of all babies were killed or abandoned to certain death in Paleolithic societies (all such claims are highly speculative of course).

Infant abandonment is normal, and people should have the same right to abandon their babies as they always had. Especially since these days we just put them into orphanages. Choosing infanticide over abandonment is pretty pointless, so why do it?

A lot of sources can be easily found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide

Comment author: BarbaraB 16 April 2012 10:31:08AM 0 points [-]

"Choosing infanticide over abandonment is pretty pointless, so why do it?"

How about infanticide as euthanasia ?

Comment author: taw 16 April 2012 06:06:44PM -2 points [-]

Killing another living thing doesn't qualify as "euthanasia" if you do it for your benefit, not that being's.

By infant abandonment by giving it to an orphanage (it's not legal everywhere, but in a lot of countries it's perfectly legal and acceptable) you lose both your responsibility and your control over the baby, so you no longer have any right to do so.

And speaking of euthanasia, we really should seriously reban it. We pretty much know how to deal with even the most severe pain - very large doses of opiates to get rid of it, and large doses of stimulants like amphetamines to counter the side effects. War on Drugs is the reason why we don't routinely do this to people in severe pain.

We don't have a magical cure for depression, but if someone is depressed, they cannot make rational decisions for themselves anyway, so they cannot decide to kill themselves legitimately.

Once you cover these casese, there are zero legitimate arguments left for euthanasia.

Comment author: Alicorn 16 April 2012 07:29:34PM 3 points [-]

We don't have a magical cure for depression, but if someone is depressed, they cannot make rational decisions for themselves anyway, so they cannot decide to kill themselves legitimately.

Suppose I say now, in my non-depressed state, that if I were ever to become so depressed that I wanted to die, I'd prefer that this want be fulfilled.

Comment author: taw 16 April 2012 11:12:04PM -1 points [-]

We cannot allow this any more than we can allow people to sold themselves to slavery as a loan guarantee.

Comment author: thomblake 16 April 2012 11:15:20PM 2 points [-]

Sure, I can see how if you didn't like the latter then you'd dislike the former.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 April 2012 11:32:46PM 2 points [-]

We cannot allow this any more than we can allow people to sold themselves to slavery as a loan guarantee.

Which doesn't preclude allowing both. I can see benefits of allowing the latter. Or, more to the point, I can see situations where forbidding the latter is morally abhorrent. Specifically, when there is not a safety net in place that prevents people starving or otherwise suffering for the lack of finances that they should be able to acquire.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 April 2012 07:38:00PM 1 point [-]

We pretty much know how to deal with even the most severe pain - very large doses of opiates to get rid of it, and large doses of stimulants like amphetamines to counter the side effects.

I'd be incredibly surprised if this actually worked clinically.

Comment author: taw 16 April 2012 11:11:33PM 0 points [-]

Start here, and follow the links.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 April 2012 11:49:07PM *  3 points [-]

That doesn't answer my question. I'm not interested in the ethical, legal, and societal barriers to adequate pain management, which is what your link covers as far as I can tell.

I want to know how one intends to circumvent opiate tolerance, and whether or not large doses of stimulants really do counteract the side effects of large doses of opiates in a large enough class of people to be effective, without the side effects of these stimulants becoming undesirable.

Comment author: Strange7 14 December 2013 05:14:50AM 0 points [-]

Assembling a drug cocktail in order to achieve some central result while minimizing side effects, with ongoing adjustment as the severity of the underlying condition and the patient's sensitivity to the drugs in question both change, is one of those complicated problems which modern medicine is nonetheless capable of solving, given adequate resources.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 April 2012 11:36:29PM 0 points [-]

Killing another living thing doesn't qualify as "euthanasia" if you do it for your benefit, not that being's.

Wow. You just decreed it impossible for euthanasia to be done professionally.

Comment author: Strange7 14 December 2013 05:01:17AM -1 points [-]

I think if someone's paying you do perform a service for them, that counts as doing it for their benefit. You're benefiting from the money, not the act itself.

Comment author: BarbaraB 18 April 2012 12:31:29PM 4 points [-]

"Choosing infanticide over abandonment is pretty pointless, so why do it?" "Killing another living thing doesn't qualify as "euthanasia" if you do it for your benefit, not that being's."

  • Let me respond by a little story telling, without making a clear point. I am not proving You wrong, just sharing my personal experience. Warnings: depressive stories about ilnesses, probably bad reading.

I once was a friend with a boy with a progressive muscular dystrophy. It is a degenerative disease, where gradually, Your muscles stop working, and at the age of cca 20, most patients die, because they stop breathing. If You have heard great stories about people on the wheelchair getting adapted to their situation, well, here adaptation can be only shorterm, because next year, You might not be able of doing what you can do now. The pain was not excruciating but there was some, the body which is deprived of excercise gives You this feedback. If he had a bad dream at night, he could not turn to the other side (a very usual remedy, most people do it without even realizing). The boy had 2 suicide attempts, although, frankly, he did not really mean them. He would make phonecalls to his friends in the evening to relieve his pain - very unwelcome calls. I sometimes pretended not to be at home, and I know other people who did the same (We were in our twenties). Then, his desperation was deepened by feeling he is not loved. Once he was calling his psychologist, and caught her in the middle of a suicide attempt, poisoned by drugs - she repeated to him HIS previous statements from the previous phonecalls. I am not saying it was HIS fault, the lady clearly failed to safeguard the known risks of her profession (plus had other problems, departed partner etc.) I am just illustrating how hard it was sometimes to deal with him. (He called other people who saved her life, to close up this branch of the story). His parents took great care of him up to the level of their financial abilities, plus using the limited help of our government. There were frequent conflicts between him and his parents, though, and made him feel unloved, again. On the other hand, his parents were deeply religious and, knowingly, had another baby with the same genetic defect later, they did not choose abortion. The older boy has died at the age of 28, his life being surprisingly long.

This story clearly contains aspects, which were not optimized, the parents could have earned more money and bring more comforts to his lives, he could have gotten a personal assistant at night, more physiotherapy excercises, a better computer, some lectures how to deal with people and get a girlfriend (his desires were strong), he could have tried harder to develop his talents and get a job, which would make him feel useful to society. (We persuaded him to get a job eventually, phone operator, lasted 1 year or so). His friens, including me, could have worked harder on their emotional maturity. But, can You see all the energy and resources to make a misery somewhat better ?

Now let us see a different story, where the parents of a sick child became EXTREME optimizers. Watch the film Lorenzo's Oil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo%27s_Oil_%28film%29) or read about Lorenzo Odone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Odone). Wonderful and admirable story. But can You see the end result, after You do all that is in Your power for Your baby ?

"Choosing infanticide over abandonment is pretty pointless, so why do it?" Abandoning a baby with a severe genetic defect at birth condemnes the baby to even lower quality of life in most government institutions, unless a millionaire chooses to adopt him.

I have a counterargument to my own reasoning right away - what if some parents killed their baby diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy (but with no developed symptomps yet) a year before Augusto and Michaela Odone invented the Lorenzo's Oil for their son ? Such parents would have lost a potentially healthy baby, the baby would lose a realistic chance to live their normal life...

I am not really trying to win this argument, just explaining, why I sometimes TOY with the idea of infanticide being not so immoral, and considering it a form of euthanasia.

Comment author: taw 18 April 2012 07:11:54PM 2 points [-]

There's plenty of diseases we can now deal with quite well because we didn't infanticide or murder everyone who had them. This isn't a coincidence that a treatment is found, if we killed everyone with a disease there would be no search for treatment.

Comment author: thomblake 18 April 2012 09:08:17PM 3 points [-]

Is this one of those "torture one person for 50 years" versus "deaths of millions" thought experiments?

Comment author: wedrifid 18 April 2012 09:28:20PM 3 points [-]

Is this one of those "torture one person for 50 years" versus "deaths of millions" thought experiments?

Easiest thought experiments ever?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 18 April 2012 10:13:11PM 7 points [-]

Would you rather be tortured for 3^^^3 years, or have a dust speck in your eye?

Comment author: wedrifid 18 April 2012 10:23:39PM 2 points [-]

Would you rather be tortured for 3^^^3 years, or have a dust speck in your eye?

If I use UDT2 can I choose 'both'?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 April 2012 10:44:52PM 2 points [-]

This seems like a good "control" thought experiment to determine whether people are just being contrarian.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 April 2012 05:37:43PM *  -1 points [-]

That's not that easy, unless having a dust speck in my eye also entails my living for 3^^^3 years.

Comment author: orthonormal 20 April 2012 03:03:41PM 1 point [-]

Note that you're arguing that your preferred policy can never have true drawbacks, rather than arguing that it's worth it on balance. Be careful.

Comment author: taw 20 April 2012 09:02:33PM 0 points [-]

Policy of not mass murdering people is as close to drawback-free as it gets.

I'm sure you can figure out some trivial drawbacks if you want.

Comment author: Nornagest 20 April 2012 09:30:16PM *  1 point [-]

Doesn't appreciably constrain your behavior, though, unless you happen to be the star of a popular Showtime series or something. Declaring a policy is only meaningful if it actually affects your choices, which in this case only makes sense if you expect to be considering mass murder as a solution to your problems.

And in a situation as extreme as that, I wouldn't be surprised if some otherwise unthinkable subjective downsides came up.

Comment author: Ishaan 05 October 2013 08:28:08PM *  2 points [-]

Are you allowed to use moral questions as litmus tests for rationality? Paper clippers are rational too.

It isn't inconceivable that a human might just value babies intrinsically (rather than because they possess an amount of intellect, emotion, and growth potential).

If anyone here has been reading this and trying to use more abstract values to try to justify why one should not to harm babies, and is unable to come up with anything, and still feels a strong moral aversion to anyone harming babies anywhere ever, then maybe it means you just intrinsically value not harming babies? As in, you value babies for reasons that go beyond the baby's personhood or lack thereoff?

(By the way, the abstract reason i managed to come up with was that current degree of personhood and future degree of personhood interact in additive ways. I'll react with appreciation to someone poking a hole in that, but I suspect I'll find another explanation rather than changing my mind. It's not that I necessarily value babies intrinsically - it's more that I don't fully understand my own preferences at an abstract level, but I do know that a moral system that allows gratuitous baby-killing must be one that does not match my preferences. So if you poke a hole in my abstract reasons, it merely means that my attempt to abstractly convey my preferences was wrong. It won't change the underlying preference.)

<But a good chunk of rationality is separating emotions from logic

Even if I insert "epistemic", i find this only partially true.

Edit: Although, my preferences do agree with yours to the extent that harming a young child does seem worse than harming a baby (though both are terrible enough to be illegal and punishable crimes). So I might respect the idea of merciful killing (in times of famine, for example) at a young age to prevent future death-inducing-suffering.

Comment author: Chrysophylax 29 December 2013 07:16:51PM *  3 points [-]

This doesn't argue that infants have zero value, but instead that they should be treated more like property or perhaps like pets (rather than like adult citizens).

You haven't taken account of discounted future value. A child is worth more than a chimpanzee of equal intelligence because a child can become an adult human. I agree that a newborn baby is not substantially more valuable than a close-to-term one and that there is no strong reason for caring about a euthanised baby over one that is never born, but I'm not convinced that assigning much lower value to young children is a net benefit for a society not composed of rationalists (which is not to say that it is not an net benefit, merely that I don't properly understand where people's actions and professed beliefs come from in this area and don't feel confident in my guesses about what would happen if they wised up on this issue alone).

The proper question to ask is "If these resources are not spent on this child, what will they be spent on instead and what are the expected values deriving from each option?" Thus contraception has been a huge benefit to society: it costs lots and lots of lives that never happen, but it's hugely boosted the quality of the lives that do.

I do agree that willingness to consider infanticide and debate precisely how much babies and foetuses are worth is a strong indicator of rationality.