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Strange7 comments on Eight Short Studies On Excuses - Less Wrong
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Parfit's Implausible Hero
Omega is crusing through the desert in its dunebuggy and sees a poor, hapless victim dying. It offers to drive him [1] back to the city, but only if he pays it $100 after getting there and stabilized. He says yes, and Omega scans him, looking for any sign of deception, and all it finds is that the victim intends, under all circumstances his mind can conceive of, to honor the agreement. So Omega takes him back.
One in town, he runs off to withdraw the money. Then he comes back a few minutes later and says, "Sorry, I was going to withdraw the money for you -- really, I was -- but an emergency came up. See, this guy took children hostage and ..."
"Oh no! No, no, don't tell me you gave him the money! That just rewards that kind of thing!"
"Please Omega, give me a little credit. I didn't give him anything, except a bullet. I quickly emptied my account to buy a sniper rifle and killed him, saving the children. So, I don't have your money, but really, I didn't expect I'd have to save children."
"Then give me the expensive rifle you bought and we'll call it even!"
"Well, that's the thing ... after the shot, when I put the gun safely away, it malfunctioned and blew up. All that's left is the wooden butt of the rifle. You can have that if you want, I guess."
"I didn't rescue you for a wooden rifle butt!"
"Yeah, but I mean, I really was intending to pay you ... you read my mind and everything. It's just that I didn't count on there being a hostage situation when I went to pay you. And so I figured ... I'm already rescued, but these kids ... It isn't my fault your mind-reading ability dissipates in the city limits."
[1] I've made the victim a him in order to avoid implying that all women are helpless victims of desert conditions.
Do the rescued children have parents? Would said parents be willing to pool their resources and pay a hostage-rescuer at least $100 plus expenses, in order to encourage proactive rescuing of children in the future? Situations like this come up in Hayate no Gotoku on a weekly basis.
Yes they would, but the Parfit's Hitchhiker problem is supposed to handle solutions for the purely one-shot case. Obviously, if you take a broad persepective, beyond the local problem, and think about the consequences of stiffing desert rescuers that ask for a reasonable fee, then of course you're going to find bad future consequences.
But you don't need TDT to justify paying in that case, just any other theory that is allowed to appeal to future consequences of the "message it sends".