Tom_Crispin comments on Torture vs. Dust Specks - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 October 2007 02:50AM

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Comment author: Tom_Crispin 30 October 2007 06:57:00PM 1 point [-]

"... whenever a tester finds a user input that crashes your program, it is always bad - it reveals a flaw in the code - even if it's not a user input that would plausibly occur; you're still supposed to fix it. "Would you kill Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?" is an important question if and only if you have trouble deciding. I'd definitely kill the Easter Bunny, by the way, so I don't think it's an important question."

I write code for a living; I do not claim that it crashes the program. Rather the answer is irrelevant as I don't think that the question is important or insightful regarding our moral judgements since it lacks physical plausibility. BTW, since one can think of God as "Santa Claus for grown-ups", the Easter Bunny lives.