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alienist 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: 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.