Saladin comments on The Least Convenient Possible World - Less Wrong

165 Post author: Yvain 14 March 2009 02:11AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (186)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: pedanterrific 07 February 2012 07:29:23PM 3 points [-]

In the Least Convenient Possible World the stranger says "Hell no!"

Now what?

Comment author: Saladin 07 February 2012 07:59:16PM *  -2 points [-]

If You force the outcome to be soly on Your decision alone and if Your decision is clear, free and consistent with a specific philosophy, then You must be judge acc. to this philosophy.

Which philosophy is valid in a Least Convenient Possible World?

If everything I do to "humanely" help the patients without commiting murder to the strange ris futile AND and if none of the patients would be willing to do a self-sacrifice to save the others AND if the sole and only decision to this situation would lie on me, then (my clearly idealized) I would teach the donor all the neccesary skills to kill and harvest me to save the others.

If not even that is allowed, then yes - a utalitarianistic murder of the stranger would be legit, beacuse You have trully checked for all options, to freely and through selff-sacrifice try to save the patiens - without success.

Only when You eliminate all humane options can You turn to the "inhumane" (I use thet term loosely - in this case, at the end, it was a humane sollution) - if that brings out more utility/less global suffering/more global pleasure and freedom.

But again - this is not a realistic option. Realistically it is almost certain that a humane approach would become viable before that.