philh 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: philh 27 August 2013 09:47:13PM 4 points [-]

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?

I would kill the million, every time. (I can imagine populations of size 1,000,000 which I would value more than 2,000,000 random humans, but I don't think any have yet existed.)

What about 1,000,000 versus 1,000,001? I'm not sure. I think that could depend on the population in question.