kodos96 comments on Morality as Parfitian-filtered Decision Theory? - Less Wrong

24 Post author: SilasBarta 30 August 2010 09:37PM

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Comment author: taw 02 September 2010 05:01:24AM 2 points [-]

Here's the original form:

So, to wrap it up, what does Parfit's Hitchhiker have to do with intellectual property? Well:

  • Omega represents the people who are deciding whether to produce difficult, satisfying intellectual works, conditional on whether we will respect certain exclusivity rights that have historically been promised them.
  • The decision to rescue us is the decision to produce those intellectual works.
  • The decision to pay the $5 represents the decision to continue to respect that exclusivity once it is produced "even though" they're "not scarce anymore", and we could choose otherwise.

But it could just as easily be:

  • Omega represents the people who are making their work freely available, conditional on whether we will keep derivative works likewise freely available
  • The decision to rescue us is the decision to produce those intellectual works
  • The decision to pay the $5 represents the decision to make your work freely available, "even though" you can as well stick a copyright on it, and make some money

Can it get more opposite? Full rejection of IP, with form identical to supportive argument.

You can rationalize anything this way.

Comment author: kodos96 02 September 2010 05:17:04AM 1 point [-]

Interesting argument, but it should probably have been made on Silas' blog, not here.

Comment author: taw 02 September 2010 05:36:07AM 1 point [-]

I'm not arguing for or against copyrights on this basis; I was just a convenient example of Parfitian reasoning that I could conveniently twist.

Comment author: SilasBarta 02 September 2010 06:51:01PM 0 points [-]

Could you instead show us an example of how to twist the Parfitian reasoning that's actually used in the article on this site?