Comment on Science: Do It Yourself

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:37:07 GMT

I at first had a similar reaction to yours, but perhaps more severe. I was somewhat humbled and even slightly ashamed to be honest by how reasonable your response was. After thinking about it in a dispassionate sense I realized that especially considering the context there is nothing worth getting upset over. I mean there are discussions about baby eaters where people didn't get upset over billions of hypothetical alien teenagers dying painfully because of their parents preferences in the baby-eater civilization. This scenario:

'If the Nazis had not attacked Russia and negotiated a peace with Britain, and remained in control of their territories, would the lives saved by the health benefits of their policies outweigh the genocides they were committing?'

Isn't really any less hypothetical unless someone comes up with a time machine or we where posting on a site that was actively hostile to the groups that would suffer dis-utility in such a scenario (where it would serve as fantasy).

gwern really highlighted a blind-spot of mine (mind-killing conditioning) with her questions and while I can't judge what effect this has on other people, particularly the net effect, I am very grateful for the personal insight.

I'm impressed how status signaling resistant LW community is, at least it seems resistant to the kinds of signaling that get a strong conditioned response from me. It does have some blind-spots but these don't seem to be exactly the same as those of the man on the street or society at large.

Discuss