You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

StRev comments on Gandhi, murder pills, and mental illness - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: erratio 13 October 2010 09:16AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (16)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 February 2013 07:17:27PM 0 points [-]

If Charlie's depression is that central to his 'self', then taking such a pill amounts to suicide. The existence of a post-pill alternate Charlie shouldn't matter; it won't be him.

The parallelism between Gandhi and Charlie here is poor because Gandhi has strong, externally directed terminal values, and Charlie doesn't. You could strengthen the problem by making Charlie a passionately committed negative utilitarian like Sister Y.