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lfghjkl comments on Compartmentalizing: Effective Altruism and Abortion - Less Wrong
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Choosing to not create a new person is not the same as killing an existing one.
How is this different from a QALY point of view?
It's not, and that is why QALY is a too simplistic point of view.
At the very least because an already-born person will almost always leave survivors aggrieved and/or materially harmed by the act, while aborted fetuses often do not.
So what about killing hermits?
If they're a truly isolated hermit, that distinction would presumably no longer apply, but the world is pretty short on truly isolated hermits.
I think you probably could kill and replace an isolated hermit in a QALY-neutral way (you'd probably need a fairly unhappy person to keep it QALY neutral even,) whereas with social connections in the equation, if you were trying to kill and replace non-hermits in a QALY neutral way, you'd ultimately end up having to do it to everyone.
I agree but in isolation in such an population ethics context it has insufficient elaboration. Some might disagree at least in theory.