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NancyLebovitz comments on Open thread, August 26 - September 1, 2013 - Less Wrong
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I have a moral question.
Is it better for the last million people of a certain population to die, or for two million people all around the world, randomly selected and evenly distributed, to die? For the first group, their death would not just result in loss of human life, but potentially loss of a lot of cultural information; their language, their religion, their mythology and folklore, their music. I feel like this cultural information has value.
Thoughts?
Fortunately, it's not the kind of choice we're generally offered in the real world.
Yes it is. We can focus on preserving culture, or we can focus on preserving life. We only have a finite amount of money, so we have to decide which is more important, or if something else altogether is.
To give a concrete example, it is compulsory for school-children in Wales to learn the Welsh language, even if they are not ethnically Welsh, and even though most people in Wales do not speak Welsh. This public policy choice is justified on the grounds of preserving Welsh culture. Whether or not you approve of this decision, it's clearly an allocation of limited time and money which could be put to other uses.
My first guess on reading Bill_McGrath's thought experiment was indeed that he had in mind something about Irish-language-related public policy choices.
Generally it's good to have choices. :)