Worth noting that the dead baby value is very different from the actual amount which most Westerners regard the lives of white, middle-class people from their own country as being worth. In fact, pretty much the whole point of the statistic is that it's SHOCKINGLY low. I suppose we could hope that Dead Baby currency would result in a reduction to that discrepancy... although I think in the case of the actual example given, the Malthusians* have a point where it would dramatically increase access to life-prolonging things without increasing access to birth control much, resulting in more population and thus more people to save.

*To clarify: I actually agree with the Malthusian ecology- it's just a basic fact of ecology, I'm amazed that anyone seriously disagrees with it- but not to the objection to charitable donations on that basis; anyone who actually thinks that would go "you should instead give money to provide birth control".

Alternative rephrasing: $4000 dollars is given to your choice of either one of the top-rated charities for saving lives, or one of the top-rated charities for distributing birth control (or something else that reduces population growth).

That means a pure reduction on both sides in number of people on the planet, and- assuming there are currently too many people on the planet- a net reduction in suffering in the long run as there are fewer people to compete with each other, plus the good it does in the short run to women who don't have to go through unwanted pregnancies and raising the children and all the benefits associated with that (like being able to devote more resources to their other children, or possibly pursuing careers further, or the like).

Note that the Reversal Test is written with the assumption of consequentialism, where there's an ideal value for some trait of the universe, whereas the whole point of the trolley problem is that the only problem is deontological, assuming the hypothetical pure example where there are no unintended consequences.

However, the Reversal Test of things like "prevent people from pulling the lever" is still useful if you want to make deontologists question the action/inaction distinction.

I was about to give the exact same example of the soldier throwing himself on a grenade. I don't know where the idea of his actions being "shameful" even comes up.

The one thing I realize from your comment is there's the dishonesty of his actions, and if lots of people did this insurance companies would start catching on and it would stop working plus it would make life insurance that much harder to work with. But it didn't sound like the original post was talking about that with "shameful", it sounds like they were suggesting (or assuming people would think) that there was something inherently wrong with the man's altruism. At least that's what's implied by the title, "really extreme altruism".

Edit: I didn't catch the "Two years after the policy is purchased, it will pay out in the event of suicide." bit until reading others comments- so, indeed, he's not being dishonest, he made a bet with the insurance company (over whether he would still intend suicide two years later) and the insurance company lost. I don't know how many insurance companies have clauses like that, though.

The assumption is that people start doing things that match with their stated beliefs- so, for instance, people who claim to oppose genocide would actually oppose genocide in all cases, which is the whole point of thinking hypocrisy is bad. Causing people to no longer be hypocrites by making them instead give up their stated beliefs would just make for a world which was more honest but otherwise not dramatically improved.

Incidentally, on the joking side: If atheists did win the religious war, they could then use this statement in a completely serious and logical context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmmQxXPOMMY

Worth elaborating: If all religious people were non-hypocritical and do exactly what the religion they claim to follow commands, there would probably be an enormous initial drop in violence, followed by any religions that follow commandments like "thou shalt not kill" without exception being wiped out, with religions advocating holy war and the persecution of heretics getting the eventual upper hand (although imperfectly adapted religions might potentially be able to hold off the better-adapted ones through strength of numbers- for instance, if a large area was controlled by a religion with the burning of heretics and defensive, cooperative religious wars, they could hold off smaller nations with religions advocating offensive wars).

One good thing about hypocrisy is that it makes a massive buffer against certain types of virulent memes. On the other hand, a world where everyone took a burn-the-heretics interpretation of Christianity or Islam 100% seriously would certainly have some advantages over ours, and especially over our middle ages- things like no un-sanctioned killing, most notably, no wars against others of the same religion, etc. Probably lots of things that would be decent ideas if you could get everyone to follow them, at the cost of an occasional burnt heretic (and possibly constant holy wars, until one religion gains the upper hand and overwhelms the others).

I think that might help somewhat- thinking of rationality as something you do rather than something you are is definitely good regardless- but there's still the basic problem that your self-esteem is invested in rationality. Rationality requires you to continually be willing to doubt your core values and consider that they might be wrong, and if your core values are wrong, then you haven't gotten any use up to that point out of your rationality. I don't think it's just a matter of realizing your were wrong once and recovering self-esteem out of the fact that you were rational enough to see that- ideally you ought to constantly consider the possibility that everything you believe might be wrong.

Now, if you can get up to the level of thinking I just described, that's probably still a lot better than basing your self-esteem on specific political views. It just doesn't totally solve the problem, and you need to be aware that it doesn't totally solve the problem.

Why would a command economy be necessary to avoid that? Welfare Capitalism- you run the economy with laissez-faire except you tax some and give it away to poor people, who can then spend it as they wish as if they'd earned it in laissez-faire economics- would work just fine. As mechanization increases, you gradually increase the welfare.

It won't be entirely easy to implement politically, mainly because of our ridiculous political dichotomy where you can either understand basic economics or care about poor people, but not both.

Since we're citing sources I'll admit Scott expressed this better than I can: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-like-left-libertarianism-ist-manifesto/#comment-23688