Alicorn comments on Consequentialism Need Not Be Nearsighted - Less Wrong
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Plenty of people survive cancer. The specific cancer patients the aliens eat might have lived if not for the aliens.
If I was reading the thought experiment correctly, the aliens are only allowed to let people die and then eat them. So the aliens wouldn't be causing any patients to die who wouldn't have died anyway. If the aliens were allowed to eat humans before they died, then that would change the whole example and make consequentialists even more pessimistic.
It wasn't specified that they died of cancer, but yeah, my misreading, thanks.