= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
JDM comments on Circular Altruism - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (300)
I would simply argue that a dust speck has 0 disutility.
That'd be Fighting the Hypothetical.
It's an extremely hypothetical situation. However, why should it, ignoring externalities as the problem required, be measured at any disutility? That dust speck has no impact on my life in any way, other than making me blink. No pain is involved.
Because it's one of the parameters of the thought experiment that a dust speck causes a miniscule amount of disutility.
Pick some other inconvenience which has a small but non-zero disutility and repeat the exercise.
I'm not disputing the validity of the thought process. I don't think the example was well chosen, however. A dust speck, ignoring externalities, doesn't affect anything. Using even a pinprick would have made the example far better.