I am stunned by the relatively high mod-points of this exchange.
I agree that the quotes are moderately funny. (Albeit the M.S. quote was much more funny in the specific context within the game, but even there it was his white-wash response to an action that earned Shepard renegade points.)
Still, I can't see, how all this is related to the "art of human rationality"...
It's related because it portrays someone disregarding the omission/commission distinction.
Among consequentialists (who seem to be quite common on LW), how something happens is not directly relevant to its moral value. Untutored intuition, in contrast, seems to say that killing is worse than letting die.
Therefore, if consequentialism is right about this, then many humans' moral intuitions are wrong in a predictable way. Thus they are biased. Thus they are irrational. Thus this is related to the art of human rationality.
This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.