palladias comments on Donation tradeoffs in conscientious objection - Less Wrong
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Comments (52)
As Khoth said, the main harm you are worried about is being conscripted. Talking about P(injured | conscripted) distracts the reader's attention. I also got the same vibe - if you re-read my first post, you'll see a less direct bit of push-back.
But again, not every post on this topic has to be about conscription ideology. Among the things that an objector would be concerned about are (a) actually being conscripted despite genuine beliefs that war is ethically wrong; (b) not suffering personal harm or death; (c) opposing wars to succeed in achieving ethical goals.
It is as if you are trying to argue that a "real" conscientious objector could only ever be concerned with (c), regardless of how (a) and (b) turn out. But that's ridiculous. Given that you care primarily about (c) then what should you do to also solve (a) and (b)?
A CO doesn't need to worry too much about serving against their will. During Vietnam, it was possible to end up in jail if you just peacefully refused to carry out any order.
I am not sure that I agree, but this is at least a cogent point. You are saying that I should not have the preferences that I do have (e.g. you think I should assign less weight to the possibility of conscription against my will). I still think this is non-sequitur to the point of the post. Just because you don't see a lot of reason to place a large negative weight on that possibility doesn't mean that asking about how best to avoid it should count as evidence of faking rather than genuine tradeoff planning.