Reply to this comment if you found LW through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality!

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You're allowed to say "X is the action I would want to take, but I wouldn't be able to"

I don't think this statement is logically consistent. Unless you're restrained by some outside force, if you don't do something, that means you didn't want to do it. You might hypothesize that you would have wanted it within some counterfactual scenario, but given the actual circumstances, you didn't want it.

The only way out of this is if we dispense with the concept of humans as individual agents altogether, and analyze various modules, circuits, and states in each single human brain as distinct entities that might be struggling against each other. This might make sense, but it breaks down the models of pretty much all standard ethical theories, utilitarian and otherwise, which invariably treat humans as unified individuals.

But regardless of that, do you accept the possibility that at least in some cases, bullet-biting on moral questions might be the consequence of a failure of imagination, not exceptional logical insight?