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elharo comments on Open thread, July 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Can someone remind me of the formal name for these fallacies:
a) an event such as a death that happens near you is weighted more heavily than one that happens far away; even if far away there are many more deaths.
b) an event that happens to people more like you is weighted more heavily than one that happens to people less like you.
and in general any other fallacies that cause people to weight the deaths of unrelated people in their own country/culture more heavily than the deaths of people further removed from them. Thanks.
How's that a fallacy? The utility function is not up for grabs. If I care more about people I know than about people I don't know, I may be evil/selfish/whatever, but I'm not (epistemically) wrong just because of that.
Fair enough. Perhaps it's not technically a "fallacy" though it can easily become so when combined with some other common ideas. But I'm still trying to come up with existing research or common phraseology on these questions.
See this. :-)
Like what?
Utilitarianism is one example. "All men are created equal" is another.
Why is that a fallacy? You SHOULD weight deaths that happen to people closer to and more like you more heavily. They're more likely to be indicative of risk of death to yourself, they are more likely to affect you in other ways, and they're more likely to be affect able BY you.
For a) you might partly be thinking of scope insensitivity (wikipedia calls it scope neglect).
Thank you. That's definitely one of the things I'm looking for.
You're welcome, happy to help!
(a) sounds a bit like the Availability Heuristic