Annoyance comments on Really Extreme Altruism - Less Wrong

16 Post author: CronoDAS 15 March 2009 06:51AM

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Comment author: 110phil 16 March 2009 03:23:25PM 12 points [-]

The man has done nothing shameful: (a) his life is his own; and (b) the insurance company bet, with its eyes open, that sufficient suicide-intenders would back down from their plans within two years that the policies would still be profitable. It lost its bet, but it was a reasonable bet.

The man has done nothing admirable, either; he has taken money from the shareholders of the insurance company, and given it to charity. Presumably this is something the shareholders could have done themselves, if they chose to. So from a libertarian standpoint, this is not an admirable act -- he forced the shareholders to do something they didn't want to do. Even though he did this through "voluntary" means.

However, I can see that if you're of the opinion that it's a good thing to take money from shareholders (who presumably are wealthier than average) and use it to save lives, then I can see how you would think this to be an admirable act.

You could also argue that the insurance company isn't stupid: it may have sold a thousand policies to intended-suiciders, and this was the only one who went through with it. In that case, the insurance company made a profit, and this man actually had a 99.9% probability of being one of the mind-changers. Unless he had strong reason to believe that he'd be the exception, he should have realized that there was a large probability, that, like the others, he was irrationally believing that his probability was higher than 0.1%.

What he should have done was contingently committed to selling his organs on the black market before committing suicide. Then, there would have been a net benefit to his death, instead of it being zero-sum, and his actions would have been admirable.

Comment author: Annoyance 23 March 2009 03:37:35PM 23 points [-]

"So from a libertarian standpoint, this is not an admirable act -- he forced the shareholders to do something they didn't want to do."

No, he didn't. They wanted to offer a life insurance policy. I'm confident that they're not thrilled about having to pay out, but they're not being forced to do anything against their will - only to keep to the obligations they freely entered into.