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Kawoomba comments on The Unselfish Trolley Problem - Less Wrong
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Is there an amount of human suffering of strangers to avoid which you'd consent to have your wife and child tortured to death?
Also, you're "allowed" your own values -- no need for rationalizations for your terminal values, whatever they may be. If the implications make you uncomfortable (maybe they aren't in accordance with facets of your self-image), well, there's not yet been a human with non-contradictory values so you're in good company.
Initially, my first instinct was to try and find the biggest font I could to say 'no'. After actually stopping to think about it for a few minutes... I don't know. It would probably have to be enough suffering to the point where it would destabilize society, but I haven't come to any conclusions. Yet.
Heh, well, I suppose you've got a point there, but I'd still like my self-image to be accurate. Though I suppose around here that kind of goes without saying.
That sounds a bit like muddling the hypothetical, along the lines of "well, if I don't let my family be tortured to death, all those strangers dying would destabilize society, which would also cause my loved ones harm".
No. Consider the death of those strangers to have no discernible impact whatsoever on your loved ones, and to keep the numbers lower, let's compare "x strangers tortured to death" versus "wife and child tortured to death". Solve for x. You wouldn't need to watch the deeds in both cases (although feel free to say what would change if you'd need to watch when choosing against your family), it would be a button choice scenario.
The difference between myself and many others on LW is that not only would I unabashedly decide in favor of my loved ones over an arbitrary amount of strangers (whose fate wouldn't impact us), I do not find any fault with that choice, i.e. it is an accurate reflection of my prioritized values.
As the saying goes, "if the hill will not come to Skeeve, Skeeve will go to the hill". There's a better alternative to trying to rewrite your values to suit your self-image. Which is constructing an honest self-image to reflect your values.
That was the sort of lines I was thinking along, yes. Framing the question in that fashion... I'm having some trouble imagining numbers of people large enough. It would have to be something on the order of 'where x contains a majority of any given sentient species'.
The realization that I could willingly consign billions of people to death and be able to feel like I made the right decision in the morning is... unsettling.
I wish I could upvote you a second time just for this line. But yes, this is pretty much what I meant; I didn't intend to imply that I wanted my self-image to be accurate and unchanging from what it is now, I'd just prefer it to be accurate.
The hypothetical is being posed is what to me is an unsatisfactory degree of abstraction. How about a more concrete form?
You are fighting in the covert resistance against some appallingly oppressive regime. (Goodness knows the 20th century has enough examples to choose from.) You get the news that the regime is onto you and have your wife and child hostage. What do you do?
We may grok that scenario in decidedly different ways:
Maybe it would serve the wife and child best if I were successful in my resistance to some degree, to have a better bargaining situation? Maybe if I gave myself up, the regime would lose any incentive to keep the hostages alive? At that point we'd just be navigating the intricacies of such added details. Better to stick with the intent of the actions: Personally, I'd take the course of action most likely to preserve the wife and child's well-being, but then I probably wouldn't have grown into a role which exposes family to the regime as high-value bargaining chips.