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WinterShaker comments on Discussion of Slate Star Codex: "Extremism in Thought Experiments is No Vice" - Less Wrong Discussion

15 Post author: Artaxerxes 28 March 2015 09:17AM

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Comment author: WinterShaker 30 March 2015 10:44:11AM 2 points [-]

A million dollars is a lot more zero-sum than not killing someone - if I give you a million dollars I lose a million dollars. To make the analogy more accurate, you'd need to stipulate that Joe will kill me if I don't kill him.

Also, I don't think it's fair to ignore the fact that for most people, not killing someone is vastly easier to do at non-self-destructive costs. I appreciate that this is a quantitative argument rather than a categorical counterargument, but if we have atheists who base their sense of morality on a vague consequentialism that they can't quite fully articulate, that's still no worse than Robertson's (presumed) divine command theory, and they should be able to make such such arguments without being accused of hypocrisy for not also advocating actions that <i>would</i> score much worse under their vague consequentialism.

Comment author: seer 31 March 2015 05:09:36AM 6 points [-]

A million dollars is a lot more zero-sum than not killing someone - if I give you a million dollars I lose a million dollars. To make the analogy more accurate, you'd need to stipulate that Joe will kill me if I don't kill him.

No, just that you'll get some benefit from killing him, e.g., you get to have sex with his wife.

Comment author: gjm 30 March 2015 11:05:20AM 4 points [-]

you'd need to stipulate that Joe will kill me if I don't kill him.

And note that many (most?) people and many (most?) legal systems do in fact hold that in such situations (war, self-defence) you are entitled to kill Joe.