[SEQ RERUN] Mere Messiahs

MinibearRex

Today's post, Mere Messiahs was originally published on 02 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

John Perry, an extropian and a transhumanist, died when the north tower of the World Trade Center fell. He knew he was risking his existence to save other people, and he had hope that he might be able to avoid death, but he still helped them. This takes far more courage than someone who dies, expecting to be rewarded in an afterlife for their virtue.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

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Today's post, Mere Messiahs was originally published on 02 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

John Perry, an extropian and a transhumanist, died when the north tower of the World Trade Center fell. He knew he was risking his existence to save other people, and he had hope that he might be able to avoid death, but he still helped them. This takes far more courage than someone who dies, expecting to be rewarded in an afterlife for their virtue.

(nods) There's a reason I didn't say anything about what you would do, but rather about what I would.

That said, I'm curious... can you clarify what you mean by "amend my ethical rules" here?

For example... so, OK, at the moment your ethical rules include the rule that "sheltering Jews from Hitler is something that should be done regardless of the risk [to you]". Let's assume for simplicity that it also includes no rules that conflict with that rule. It follows that, given the choice to shelter a Jew or not, you shelter... that's straightforward; no evaluation of consequences is necessary.

Now, suppose now you come to believe that your shelter has been compromised and is under Nazi observation, such that any Jew you shelter will be killed. It seems to follow straightforwardly that you still shelter the Jew, because actually prolonging the Jew's life is irrelevant... that's a mere consequence.

But your reference to amending your ethical rules suggests that it might not be that simple. Might you, in this hypothetical example, instead "use consequentialism to [...] amend [your] ethical rules" so that they no longer motivate you to shelter the Jew in situations where doing so leads to the Jew's death?

Well, we'll start playing on words right now... "shelter" according to freedictionary means "a. Something that provides cover or protection, as from the weather." If Nazi are observing my home, then it's no longer a "shelter", but it becomes a "trap", in the meaning I was giving to "shelter".

But the ethical rule is not actually "shelter Jews from Hitler", but more "protect if you can people who are threatened of something horrible while they didn't do anything to deserve it", or somethin... (read more)

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