To hold that speech is interchangeable with violence is to hold that a bullet can be the appropriate answer to an argument.

What would you think of Brits who could have their electrodes removed, but preferred to leave them in?

Personally, it would reduce my interest in being careful with salmon pictures.

I notice that I would not support showing British people pictures of Salmon.

I notice that I would support showing Muslim people pictures of Mohammad.

These two situations seem nearly identical.

I notice that I am confused.

I see two analogous situations, and yet I come to two different conclusions. Therefore, there must be some difference between them, even if it only lies in my perceptions. Perhaps by carving these situations at their joints, I can find why it is I come away with different conclusions. Explicitly, I remember the stated differences.

1) Race/Culturism - The British are British and not Muslim

2) Blame - The British are not "at fault" as victims of a prank while the Muslims are "at fault" by virtue of being members of a religion

As a detirminist, I cannot say that the Muslims chose to be Muslims any more than British people chose to be waylayed by a prankster in the night. That seems very damning; this only leaves the option that I must be racist. However, there is perhaps a third option that is missing. Implicitly, I notice a number of unstated differences that can only be assumed.

3) Treatability - The British people have an electrode installed, which implies to me they receive the same disutility for every salmon picture seen. After year of salmon pictures, the 366th day of seeing salmon pictures would hurt just as much as the 1st day. In Muslims, the disutility of seeing pictures of Mohammad decreases until it eventually disappears. It is possible to 'cure' a muslim of recieving disutility from pictures of Mohammad in a way it is not possible with the British.

4) Resistance - The British people do not want to have an aversion to salmon. If given the choice to remove the salmon reaction, they would do so. The Muslim people want to have an aversion to Mohammad. In fact, they consider it morally right to hate pictures of Mohammad.

5) Propagation - A salmon averse Briton would hate seeing pictures of Salmon all his life, and then would die. In the worst case, the world has to live without pictures of salmon for 100 years, assuming the singularity doesn't hit before then. Muslims will teach their children to have the same aversions they do. Worst case scenario, 10,000 years from now we'll be sending messages to our other planets across galaxies but we still can't make pictures of the prophet Mohammad.

6) Mutation - A Briton would be pained by pictures of only Salmon until their end of days. The aversion to pictures of Mohammad has already mutated into anything critical towards Islam. Specifically, Van Gogh died due to women's rights, a trait only marginally related to Mohammad in as much as his film used verses from the Quran. An appropriate analogy would be if salmon-aversion mutated to hating all pictures or discussion of fish, because they're somewhat similar to salmon.

7) Virulence - Losing the right to show salmon to British people would only hurt a small subset of nature photographers. Losing the right to criticize Islam already hampers a number of humanitarian efforts in the Middle East (eg women's rights). If we were to extend the salmon analogy, we would require the British to hate fighting climate change, because it's sort of related to saving fish.

8) Pathogenicity - The British seem to respond to seeing pictures of fish with polite inquiries to stop and social pressure. Muslim extremists respond to pictures of Mohammad or media critical of Islam with death threats, assassinations, and government blocks.

These are significant differences, and most of them I didn't notice until I started enumerating the differences. The question is, is the difference in my reaction caused by the explicit differences (#1-2) or the implicit differences (#3-8). I shall return to the original scenario and remove those explicit differences. If my reaction to the modified scenario remains constant, it means that I made my decision based on explicit differences. If my reaction to the modified scenario changes, it means I made my decision based on implicit differences.

Imagine that one night, an alien prankster secretly implants electrodes into the brains of an entire country - let's say Britain. The next day, everyone in Britain discovers that pictures of salmon suddenly give them jolts of painful psychic distress. Every time they see a picture of a salmon, or they hear about someone photographing a salmon, or they even contemplate taking such a picture themselves, they get a feeling of wrongness that ruins their entire day. The chip also modifies the British people's behavior such that they believe having this sense of wrongness is morally right. When their children are born, they implant these salmon hating electrodes in them. Interestingly, these electrodes have a number of flaws (or features), such as repeated exposure to salmon burns out the salmon-hating batteries. Another flaw (or feature) is that this aversion to salmon can mutate to an aversion of any sort of aquatic animal or cause relating to aquatic animals. Great Briton quickly becomes currently the only country attempting to fight against reduction of Global Climate Change. A number of climate change scientists and activists receive death threats by the British people for their work. Tragedy strikes when filmmaker Al Gore is assassinated for his quote "salmon-loving ways" unquote.

Sweet zombie jesus! That's a scenario that sends shivers down my spine. I would do everything I could to burn out those salmon-hating microchips. It seems that the difference in my reactions really is based on implicit differences I could not easily identify. On further reflection, Race and Nationality and even (surprisingly) Religion were irrelevant to my decision making compared to the consequences caused by the salmon/Mohammad meme.

Now another scenario. Imagine that those Muslims who hate seeing Mohammad got chosen by the prankster to get the salmon-hating electrodes in their brain. (The original salmon-chips Yvain made, not these nightmarish self-replicating, self-mutating ones I made.) They hate seeing both pictures of Salmon and pictures of Mohammad. In this case I would not support showing the Muslims pictures of Salmon, but I would support showing the Muslims pictures of Mohammad. This is consistent with my prior decisions and internally consistent with my morals.

Let me revisit my first statements now, with sticky and emotional words dissolved.

I notice that I would not support showing any people pictures of anything, if it caused pain but did not make the world a better place.

I notice that I would support showing any people pictures of anything, if it caused pain but helped make the world a better place.

These two situations are not nearly as identical as they appeared at first glance.

I notice that I am no longer confused.

Got another potential b) here.

Hey, I just wanted to chime in here. I found the moral argument against eating animals compelling for years but lived fairly happily in conflict with my intuitions there. I was literally saying, "I find the moral argument for vegetarianism compelling" while eating a burger, and feeling only slightly awkward doing so.

It is in fact possible (possibly common) for people to 'reason backward' from behavior (eat meat) to values ("I don't mind large groups of animals dying"). I think that particular example CAN be consistent with your moral function (if you really don't care about non-human animals very much at all) - but by no means is that guaranteed.

you have to sort of act as if your brain was screaming that loudly even when your brain doesn't have a voice that loud.

Why should I act this way?

Many of us go through life understanding that we should care about people suffering far away from us, but failing to.

That is the thing that I never got. If I tell my brain to model a mind that cares, it comes up empty. I seem to literally be incapable of even imagining the thought process that would lead me to care for people I don't know.

If anybody knows how to fix that, please tell me.

Interesting article, sounds a very good introduction to scope insensitivity.

Two points where I disagree :

1. I don't think birds are a good example of it, at least not for me. I don't care much for individual birds. I definitely wouldn't spend $3 nor any significant time to save a single bird. I'm not a vegetarian, it would be quite hypocritical for me to invest resources in saving one bird for "care" reasons and then going to eat a chicken at dinner. On the other hand, I do care about ecological disasters, massive bird death, damage to natural reserves, threats to a whole specie, ... So a massive death of birds is something I'm ready to invest resources to prevent, but not a single death of bird.

2. I know it's quite taboo here, and most will disagree with me, but to me, the answer to how big the problems are is not charity, even "efficient" charity (which seems a very good idea on paper but I'm quite skeptical about the reliability of it), but more into structural changes - politics. I can't fail to notice that two of the "especially virtuous people" you named, Gandhi and Mandela, both were active mostly in politics, not in charity. To quote another one often labeled "especially virtuous people", Martin Luther King, "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

You should send a message to Viliam Bur.

So ... I suspect someone might be doing that mass-downvote thing again. (To me, at least.)

Where do I go to inform a moderator so they can check?