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Normal_Anomaly comments on Not By Empathy Alone - Less Wrong
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One person's modus ponens is another's modus tollens. The fact that there is no harm involved in "victimless crimes" leads myself and plenty of other people to label (at least the first two of) those "crimes" as acceptable.
I'm curious what distinction you're drawing that makes the first acceptable but not the fourth.
Edit: Upon rereading, this seems more confrontational than was intended. To clarify, I agree there's nothing wrong with the second, hold reservations about the third only insofar as it's not clear to me that there really is no harm involved, and have simply never thought much about the first or fourth.
I believe there is harm done by the third, because I value the existence of natural beauty even when I can't see it, and there are other problems with destroying unpopulated places as well. I have only a minor problem with the fourth. If it is known that the graves of people with no surviving relatives are often desecrated, this may make currently-alive people sad about their or their loved ones' graves being desecrated later. If nobody knows about the desecration, it's probably okay (excepting TDT-style concerns about people predicting future desecration from others' moral opinions).
I suppose it depends on what precisely is meant by "destruction" - there's been mention downthread of nuking the moon, which... I could see the argument that it would add value without harming anything worthwhile.
And I get how desecrating graves could make people unhappy about the prospects of their own remains. I was asking because I don't quite see how necrophilia could be okay while corpse-desecration is not - one seems to require the other.
Oh, I see now. I was compartmentalizing pretty heavily there, wasn't I? I think I know why: the hypothetical situation I was imagining for necrophilia was on a desert island, (probably borrowed from the default one for cannibalism). The hypothetical for grave-desecration was spray-painting a gravestone in a local cemetery. People are less likely to find out in the former, so I never took those considerations into account.
Yes, in situations where grave-desecrating in general is not okay, necrophilia isn't either. I still think both are mostly okay if nobody finds out, and my saying this shouldn't make anyone sad as I have no desire to do either.