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lessdazed comments on Rationality Quotes August 2011 - Less Wrong
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^Wrong. Actually what we can do to rats is very limited compared to what we can do to humans. As for what we can do with humans... Together, even the sky is not the limit anymore: we pierce through it with our XXX. Also, wrong: in an absolute sense, we "can" do to humans the stuff we do on rats, but there are reasons, beyond ethics, why we don't. It's just. Not. Convenient.
I would have phrased this comment differently, perhaps by saying "This quote is unimpressive because it glosses over the fact that we can do numerous bad things to humans that we can't do to rats."
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Most, almost all, things we can do to rats, we can do to humans. We can do very many things to rats. Therefore, we can do most, almost all, of very many things to humans, i.e. we can do many things to humans.
P1. RATdo-->HUMANdo
P2. RATdomostanything
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C. HUMANdomostanything
As the statement is correct according to a common and natural (the most common and natural?) way of corresponding language with logic, I don't approve of beginning a comment on it with "^Wrong".
I don't think the original statement at all strongly implies that what we can do to humans is limited to things we can do to rats. If I did, I'd feel some obligation to interpret it charitably.
Your phrasing is much better. But I still think the comparison is very weak, it's like saying "natural numbers are infinite, real numbers contain natural numbers, therefore they are infinite": it fails to convey the sheer MAGNITUDE of the situation.