= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
WalterL comments on Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (283)
Yeah, and I'm asking, do those experiences "count"?
If organs are going from comatose humans to better ones, and we've decided that people who aren't sensing don't deserve theirs, how about people who aren't communicating their senses? It seems like this principal can go cool places.
If we butchered some mass murderer we could save the lives of a few taxpayers with families that love them (there will be forms, and an adorableness quotient, and Love Weighting). All that the world would be out is the silent contemplation of the interior of a cell. Clearly a net gain, yeah?
So, are we stopping at "no sensing -> we jack your meats", or can we cook with gas?
It's not about communication. It's not even about sensing. It's about subjective experience. If your mind worked properly but you just couldn't sense anything or do anything, you'd have moral worth. It would probably be negative and it would be a mercy to kill you, but that's another issue entirely. From what I understand, if you're in a coma, your brain isn't entirely inactive. It's doing something. But it's more comparable to what a fish does than a conscious mammal.
Someone in a coma is not a person anymore. In the same sense that someone who is dead is not a person anymore. The problem with killing someone is that they stop being a person. There's nothing wrong with taking them from not a person to a slightly different not a person.
A mass murderer is still a person. They think and feel like you do, except probably with less empathy or something. The world is better off without them, and getting rid of them is a net gain. But it's not a Pareto improvement. There's still one person that gets the short end of the stick.
I can't tell if you have a recommendation. If you have a model to suggest, please share it.