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Nornagest comments on The Aliens have Landed! - Less Wrong
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Is there a standard name for the logical fallacy where you attempt a reductio ad absurdum but fail to notice that you're deriving the absurdity from more than one assumption? Why conclude that it's the caring about far-away strangers that is crazy, as opposed to the decision algorithm that says you should give in to extortions like this?
I'm not sure words like "crazy" and "absurd" are even meaningful in this context. It's pretty easy to come up with internally consistent arguments generating both results, and the scenario's outlandish enough that it's not clear which one has more practical vulnerabilities; essentially we're dealing with dueling intuitions.