= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
cousin_it comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (534)
Would that work symmetrically? Imagine the father swaps the kid in the hospital while the mother is asleep, tired from giving birth. Then the mother takes the kid home and starts raising it without knowing it isn't hers. A week passes. Now you approach the mother and offer her your rational arguments! Explain to her why she should stay with the father for the sake of the child that isn't hers, instead of (say) stabbing the father in his sleep and going off to search "chauvinistically" for her baby.
This is not an honest mirror-image of the original problem. You have introduced a new child into the situation, and also specified that the mother has been raising the "wrong child" for one week, whereas in the original problem the age of the child was left unspecified.
There do exist valuable critiques of this idea. I wasn't expecting it to be controversial, but in the spirit of this site I welcome a critical discussion.
Really? Why?
I would have expected it to be uncontroversial that being biologically related should matter a great deal. You're responsible for someone you brought in to the world; you're not responsible for a random person.
So what? If the mother isn't a "biological chauvinist" in your sense, she will be completely indifferent between raising her child and someone else's. And she has no particular reason to go look for her own child. Or am I misunderstanding your concept of "biological chauvinism"?
If it was one week in the original problem, would that change your answers? I'm honestly curious.
In the original problem, I was criticizing the husband for being willing to abandon the child if he learned he wasn't the genetic father. If the child is one week old, the child would grow up without a father, which is perhaps not as bad as having a father and then losing him. I've elaborated my position here.