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pragmatist comments on [Link] Forty Days - Less Wrong Discussion

12 Post author: GLaDOS 29 September 2014 12:29PM

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Comment author: pragmatist 01 October 2014 11:31:44AM *  1 point [-]

Right, now we're talking - what is the burden of the quarantine vs what is the burden of not having a quarantine. The burden of the quarantine is lifetime imprisonment for sufferers, the burden of not-quarantine is that you don't get to have consequence-free casual sex (or share needles). It's not a close call.

Actually, that's not what you were talking about in this part of the discussion. You were talking about the burden of tattooing people non-consensually vs. the burden of not doing that. Being forced to get a tattoo is much less burdensome than being quarantined for most people, I imagine. That makes it at least a closer call.

Also it's a bit disingenuous to characterize the burden of non-quarantine as not being able to have "consequence-free casual sex", when the consequences we're talking about are the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Probably you disagree that this was a necessary consequence of non-quarantine (and I'm with you on that), but that's a separate issue.