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Multiheaded comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) - Less Wrong
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Major objection. When talking about society at large and not the small cluster of "rationalist" utilitarians (who are ever tempted to be smarter than their ethics), the current standard is "don't kill what our instincts register as people". The distinction being that John Q. Public hardly reflects on the matter at all. I believe that it's a hugely useful standard because it strengthens the relevant ethical injunctions, regardless of any inconveniences that it brings from an act utilitarian standpoint.
The fact that infanticide has been practiced so widely suggests strongly that most people don't "instinctively" see babies as people. It is at best a weak instinct supported by a strong social convention in most Western societies.
But yes, point taken. Even so, TimS was talking about "the cluster of values we've currently adopted", which, as you say, most people never think about at all. So my post should be taken to refer to people who have given any thought whatsoever to the question of why they're OK with killing pigs but not killing adult humans. I'd wager their conclusion is almost universally "because pigs aren't people".
NO! As you have yourself correctly pointed out, it is because most cultures, with ours being a notable exception, assign a low value to "useless" people or people who they feel are a needless drain on society. (mistake fixed)
Hm. So what seems to follow from this is that most people don't actually consider killing people to be a particularly big deal, what they're averse to is killing people who contribute something useful to society... or, more generally, that most people are primarily motivated by maximizing social value.
Yes? (I don't mean to be pedantic here, I just want to make sure I'm not putting words in your mouth.)
Blast me! I meant to say that our culture is an exception, not an "inclusion". So this statement is largely true about non-western cultures, but western ones mostly view the relatively recent concept of "individuality and personhood are sacred" as their main reason against murder.
Ah, gotcha. That makes sense.
So is your position that we inherited an aversion to murder from earlier non-western cultures, and then when we sanctified personhood we made that our main reason for our pre-existing aversion?
Or that earlier cultures weren't averse to murder, and our sanctification caused us to develop such an aversion?
Or something else?
Both, probably. We inherited all of their aversion (being a modest amount), and then we developed the sacredness, which, all on its own, added several times more aversion on top of that.