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Dagon comments on Open thread, Jul. 25 - Jul. 31, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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The mainstream LW idea seems to be that the right to life is based on sentience.
At the same time, killing babies is the go-to example of something awful.
Does everyone think babies are sentient, or do they think that it's awful to kill babies even if they're not sentient for some reason, or what?
Does anyone have any reasoning on abortion besides, Not sentient being, killing it is okay QED (wouldn't that apply to newborns, too?)?
I don't know if this is mainstream, but IMO it's massively oversimplified to the point of incorrectness. There's plenty of controversy over what "right" even means, and how to value sentience is totally unsolved. I tend to use predicted-quality-adjusted-experience-minutes as a rough guideline, but adjust it pretty radically based on emotional distance and other factors.
I think of it more as a placeholder than an example. It's not an assertion that this is universally awful in all circumstances (though many probably do think that), it's intended to be "or something else you think is really bad".