Izeinwinter comments on Open thread, August 26 - September 1, 2013 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: philh 26 August 2013 09:00PM

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Comment author: Pentashagon 27 August 2013 06:15:21PM 2 points [-]

That depends on how you define the population. Killing the worst 1 million people (people who have caused the most harm to other people, and would continue to cause significant harm) instead of 2 million random people would be a very large net benefit. There have probably been few or no traditional populations (nations, cultures, political movements, etc.) that would be worth completely eradicating, and probably never an entire 1 million people in such a population worth killing out of hand, but if I was forced to choose, I think I could find examples in the 20th century.