= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
fortyeridania comments on Rationality Quotes: July 2010 - 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 (216)
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.
The situations in which a habitual killer-of-humans will cause death come up more often than the situations in which a habitual letter-of-humans-die will cause death. If you're a consequentialist who negatively values death, it seems to follow that a habit of killing humans is worse than a habit of letting them die.
Thank you for pointing out this argument.
I'm not sure I agree that "let-die" situations arise less often than "kill" situations. It seems that every moment you have disposable income (i.e. more than you and yours need to survive) involves a choice between saving someone's life and not saving anyone's life.
(nods) That's fair.
And yes, if it makes sense to classify what I'm doing right now as choosing not to avert avoidable deaths, it follows that my lifestyle is morally worse (from a consequentialist perspective) than that of a poor murderer.