skeptical_lurker comments on Compartmentalizing: Effective Altruism and Abortion - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Dias 04 January 2015 11:48PM

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Comment author: skeptical_lurker 05 January 2015 12:25:41AM *  9 points [-]

What credence do you give to the proposition that every sperm is sacred?

Unless your credence is a lot less than one in a billion (which is dubious given overconfidence bias) then this dominates all other concerns

Comment author: Vaniver 05 January 2015 10:14:16AM 10 points [-]

Unless your credence is a lot less than one in a billion (which is dubious given overconfidence bias) then this dominates all other concerns

The easiest argument against this is to observe that sperm are not the limiting factor in creating more lives- uterus time and parenting time are.

Comment author: casebash 07 January 2015 01:31:11PM 0 points [-]

This is a good point, but it applies to moral uncertainty in general, not just to this particular case

Comment author: gjm 07 January 2015 04:15:38PM 2 points [-]

Isn't that kinda the point? It suggests there's probably something wrong with arguments of the form "such-and-such an improbable proposition about moral values would make a huge difference if correct, so we should all drop everything and attend to it".

One thing that might be wrong: if moral values are not objective facts about the world but about particular people's (or communities') value systems, then it doesn't make sense to ask "what's the probability that every sperm is sacred?" or "what's the probability that a foetus is about as important morally as an adult human?"; our values are what they are and it's perfectly reasonable to have very little uncertainty about them. It remains reasonable to ask "what's the probability that spermatozoa or foetuses have the properties that I do, in fact, regard as conferring moral significance?" -- but that probability may reasonably be extremely low, e.g. on the grounds that spermatozoa don't have brains.

Comment author: Unknowns 05 January 2015 02:15:27AM 0 points [-]

How would it dominate? What would you do if it were true?

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 05 January 2015 09:44:10AM *  1 point [-]

It would dominate (if you buy into the EA maximise QALY assumptions) because the QALY lost would massively outweigh those lost to everything else.

If it were true, then I suppose one could freeze sperm so that a future space faring civilisation with room for a larger population can use them. But I'm not suggesting anyone actually bites this bullet.