CG_Morton comments on Consequentialism Need Not Be Nearsighted - Less Wrong

53 Post author: orthonormal 02 September 2011 07:37AM

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Comment author: Kingreaper 03 September 2011 11:55:17AM *  5 points [-]

The solution here is a stopgap that just diminishes the urgency of technology to grow organ replacements, and even if short-term consequentially it leaves more people alive, it in fact worsens out long-term life expectancy by not addressing the problem (which is that people's organs get damaged or wear out).

[parody mode]

Penicillin is a stopgap that just diminishes the urgency of technology to move people onto a non-organic substrate, and even if short-term consequentially it leaves more people alive, it in fact worsens out long-term life expectancy by not addressing the problem (which is that people live in an organic substrate vulnerable to outside influence)

[/parody mode]

Have you ever heard the saying "the perfect is the enemy of the good"? By insisting that only perfect solutions are worthwhile, you are arguing against any measure that doesn't make humans immortal.

Comment author: CG_Morton 04 September 2011 10:21:50PM 1 point [-]

My point was meant in the sense that random culling for organs is not the best solution available to us. Organ growth is not that far in the future, and it's held back primarily because of moral concerns. This is not analagous to your parody, which more closely resembles something like: "any action that does not work towards achieving immortality is wrong".

The point is that people always try to find better solutions. If we lived in a world where, as a matter of fact, there is no way whatsoever to get organs for transplant victims except from living donors, then from a consequentialist standpoint some sort of random culling would in fact be the best solution. And I'm saying, that is not the world we live in.

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