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lfghjkl comments on Compartmentalizing: Effective Altruism and Abortion - Less Wrong Discussion

23 Post author: Dias 04 January 2015 11:48PM

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Comment author: lfghjkl 05 January 2015 05:01:38AM 3 points [-]

Choosing to not create a new person is not the same as killing an existing one.

Comment author: alienist 06 January 2015 02:07:12AM 6 points [-]

How is this different from a QALY point of view?

Comment author: lfghjkl 06 January 2015 01:29:34PM 4 points [-]

It's not, and that is why QALY is a too simplistic point of view.

Comment author: Desrtopa 07 January 2015 12:06:27AM 1 point [-]

At the very least because an already-born person will almost always leave survivors aggrieved and/or materially harmed by the act, while aborted fetuses often do not.

Comment author: alienist 07 January 2015 05:13:27AM 11 points [-]

So what about killing hermits?

Comment author: Desrtopa 09 January 2015 04:19:11PM *  0 points [-]

If they're a truly isolated hermit, that distinction would presumably no longer apply, but the world is pretty short on truly isolated hermits.

I think you probably could kill and replace an isolated hermit in a QALY-neutral way (you'd probably need a fairly unhappy person to keep it QALY neutral even,) whereas with social connections in the equation, if you were trying to kill and replace non-hermits in a QALY neutral way, you'd ultimately end up having to do it to everyone.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 05 January 2015 07:26:55AM 1 point [-]

I agree but in isolation in such an population ethics context it has insufficient elaboration. Some might disagree at least in theory.