I am unsure that I understand your objection to the word, but I will replace it with a complicated phrase to try and be more clear.
And thank you for that link; that is an interesting article. The choice between stubbing my toe and a complete stranger being tortured for fifty years without my knowledge is especially interesting. I experience empathy, so I expect that amount of suffering by another when linked by the petty intimacy of being the person to allow/make it happen will create more suffering for me than would stubbing my toe.
If I would never know, though, if it were wiped from my mind that it happened or that I played a part, then the right choice is the other's torture, not stubbing my own toe. But it is difficult to say so, it is difficult to separate myself-deciding from myself-living-with-it.
Or maybe the suffering-by-empathy at the very point of deciding to sentence the other to the fifty-year oubliette of torture is greater than the direct suffering of stubbing my toe. Curious.
The right choice? Who is it telling you that you've got to have the other person tortured, if you just happen not to feel like it?
The next discussion thread is here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 84. The previous thread has passed 500 comments. Comment in the 14th thread until you read chapter 84.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: