Comment on Ethical Injunctions

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 15:15:12 GMT

My guess is the results of that poll would depend radically on how the question is worded.

But yes, I agree with you that for most wordings, most people (including most LW contributors) will say "X units torture is worse than Y units of dust specks" for any substantial X & Y, no matter how vanishingly small X/Y is. And those who say "dust specks are worse for a sufficiently small X/Y" will chide them for succumbing to scope insensitivity, and the Torture Is Worse team will counterchide for being evil.

For my own part, I think recovery is a red herring. Sure, it's implausible to imagine a person recovering from fifty years of torture in the real world. It's also implausible to imagine 3^^^3 people getting a dust speck in their eye in the real world. It's an implausible thought experiment. So what?

But if one insists on taking recovery rates into account, well, OK: consider a person whose life thus far has been so miserable that they are right on the borderline of they can recover from. Left alone, they'd eventually manage recovery, but even the slightest worsening of their condition -- say, getting a dust speck in their eye at the wrong time -- will tip them over the edge. Of course, the odds of that person actually existing are vanishingly small... but they are larger than 1/3^^^3. (Or, if you don't agree, then make the ridiculous number even bigger.) So whichever way you choose, you've got some poor shmuck irrecoverably harmed by your choice.

Yes, of course that's just an intuition pump. Considering the irrecoverable harm to the torture victim is also an intuition pump. As long as we just keep tinkering with the settings of the thought experiment so that it pumps our intuitions in the direction we want to go, we'll get nowhere.

All of which is to say I mostly agree with Grognor here... the "debate" goes nowhere. Those who say "specks is worse" pride themselves on being willing to endorse a theoretical calculation about right and wrong action even when the result of that calculation conflicts with their intuitive judgments. Those who say "torture is worse" pride themselves on being able to hold on to their intuitive judgments even when the context is distractingly complicated. Mostly, the two groups don't agree on a hypothetical situation to talk about in the first place. It gets pointless fast.

Discuss