tcpkac comments on Circular Altruism - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 January 2008 06:00PM

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Comment author: tcpkac 22 January 2008 10:09:47PM 4 points [-]

To get back to the 'human life' examples EY quotes. Imagine instead the first scenario pair as being the last lifeboat on the Titanic. You can launch it safely with 40 people on board, or load in another 10 people, who would otherwise die a certain, wet, and icy death, and create a 1 in 10 chance that it will sink before the Carpathia arrives, killing all. I find that a strangely more convincing case for option 2. The scenarios as presented combine emotionally salient and abstract elements, with the result that the emotionally salient part will tend to be foreground, and the '% probabilities' as background. After all no-one ever saw anyone who was 10% dead (jokes apart).