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polymathwannabe comments on Open thread, 11-17 August 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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What values could possibly lead to such a choice?
Hardcore negative utilitarianism?
(Pretty cute wind-up on Smart's part; grab Popper's argument that to avoid totalitarianism we should minimize pain, not maximize happiness, then turn it around on Popper by counterarguing that his argument obliges the obliteration of humanity whenever feasible!)
Values that value animals as high or nearly as high as humans.
Not if you account for the typical suffering in nature. Humans remain the animals' best hope of ever escaping that.
It might not just be about suffering-- there's also the plausible claim that humans lead to less variety in other species.
I feel like that's a value that only works because of scope insensitivity. If the extinction of a species is as bad as killing x individuals, then when the size of the population is not near x, one of those things will dominate. But people still think about it as if they're both significant.
Why does that, um, matter?
I can see valuing animal experience, but that's all about individual animals. Species don't have moral value, and nature as a whole certainly doesn't.
A fair number of people believe that it's a moral issue if people wipe out a species, though I'm not sure if I can formalize an argument for that point of view. Anyone have some thoughts on the subject?
Would you say the same about groups of humans? Is genocide worse than killing an equal number of humans but not exterminating any one group?
I suspect that the reason we have stronger prohibitions against genocide than against random mass murder of equivalent size is not that genocide is worse, but that it is more common.
It's easier to form, motivate, and communicate the idea "Kill all the Foos!" (where there are, say, a million identifiable Foos in the country) than it is to form and communicate "Kill a million arbitrary people."
I suspect that's not actually true. The communist governments killed a lot of people in a (mostly) non-genocidal manner.
The reason we have stronger prohibitions against genocide is the same reason we have stronger prohibitions against the swastika than against the hammer and sickle. Namely, the Nazis were defeated and no longer able to defend their actions in debates while the communists had a lot of time to produce propaganda.
Wait, what? Did considering genocide more heinous than regular mass murder only start with the end of WWII?
Unfortunately, genocides happen all the time.
But only one of them got big media attention. Which made it the evil.
Cynically speaking: if you want the world to not pay attention to a genocide, (a) don't do it in a first-world country, and (b) don't do it during the war with other side which can make condemning the genocide part of their propaganda, especially if at the end you lose the war.
For that it's worth, the word genocide may been invented to describe what the Nazis did-- anyone have OED access to check for earlier cites?
Alternatively, killing a million people at semi-random (through poverty or war) is less conspicuous than going after a defined group.
I don't see why it should be.
Do particular cultures or, say, languages, have any value to you?
Do particular computer systems or, say, programming languages, have any value to you?
Compare your attitude to these two questions, what accounts for the difference?
The fact that I am human.
And..?
Nailed it. By which I mean, this is the standard argument. I'm surprised nobody brought it up earlier.
... one way or another.
Given how long they don't live, I'd be satisfied with just preventing any further generations.
Let's suppose for a moment that's what Username meant. If Username deems other beings to be more valuable than humans, then Username, as a human, will have a hard time convincing hirself of pursuing hir own values. So I guess we're safe.
I'm not going to say what the values are, beyond that I don't think they would be surprising for a LWer to hold. Also, yes, you're safe.
But it seems like you started with disbelief in X, and you were given an example of X, and your reaction should be to now assume that there are more examples of X; and it looks like instead, you're attempting to reason about class X based on features of a particular instance of it.
I thought it was clear that "Username deems other beings to be more valuable than humans" was a particular instance of X, not a description of the entire class.