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wedrifid comments on The Unselfish Trolley Problem - Less Wrong
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Yes.
Yes. It would need to be more than you could save via earning as much money as possible and buying lives as cheaply as possible. Certainly more than 5 for most people (living in my country and most likely yours).
The average person's net utility doesn't matter, since so far we have only been comparing saving average people to saving more average people. What could matter is if for some reason we believed that the 5 people on the track had more net utility per person than the (statistical) people expected to be saved by future altruistic efforts.
For the extreme altruist this isn't an excuse (any more than a paperclip maximiser needs an excuse to create paperclips). The rest of us don't need an excuse (although given the extreme utility differences at play there are many people who both could use it as an excuse but would refrain from suicide even without it). I find that thinking in terms of 'excuses' is something of a hinderance. The wrong intuitions come into play (ie. the ones where we make up bullshit that sounds good to others instead of the ones where we make good decisions).
Not so - we are comparing saving average people to saving people who would have died without aid.
It's possible (and I'm not making this claim, just pointing out the possibility) that the type of person who's life can be saved as cheaply as possible is contributing less net good to the lives of other people than the average person (who is self sufficient). In real-world terms, it is plausible that the latter is more likely to support a family or even donate money. I'm not saying that some people have more intrinsic value - but the deaths of some people might weigh more heavily on the survivors than the deaths of others.
Since humans are social animals, the total dis-utility resulting from the death of a human is {intrinsic value of human life} + {value that this individual contributes to other humans}. As I said before:
I agree. I feel that people should never use excuses, at least never within their own minds - but the fact is that humans aren't neat like utility functions, and do use excuses to negotiate clashing preferences within themselves. That is why I felt the need to point out that other people who are reading this conversation should not use the (correct) observation you made about extreme altruists and apply it to themselves - it's quite conceivable that someone who was struggling with this moral dilemma would use it as a way to get out of admitting that they aren't living up to their ideal of "good".
Please see the sentence after the one you quoted.
I felt (and feel) obliged to point out to the same people that it is often an error to be persuaded to do Y by someone telling you that "X is no excuse not to do Y". Accepting that kind of framing can amount to allowing another to modify your preferences. Allowing others to change your preferences tends to be disadvantageous.