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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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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.
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...
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.
Both menus being "vegetarian and non vegetarian" or "pork menu and baby menu"? :)
You started eating month-old infants?
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.)
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.
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.
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...
this is sounding like a copout....
That guy clearly asked you those questions in the wrong order.
... 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...
... leads to the opposite bias, as if the listener cannot refute your second point they must convert to vegetarianism or visibly contradict themselves.
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.
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.
How about fertilized egg cells?
Caviar made from fertilized human egg cells, yum.