11 Comments
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Kyle Star's avatar

I dislike people who refuse to make choices in moral hypotheticals way more than those who decide to make horrible choices in moral hypotheticals. People really like to intuitively keep their moral options open and can’t even tell they’re avoiding answering a normal ass question.

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MJR Schneider's avatar

As a well-educated, slightly socially conservative, communitarian person who would probably be in the Church of Denmark if I was Danish, I have to ask: but where DO you draw the line though? Utilitarians are generally quite bad at drawing lines, I find.

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Silas Abrahamsen's avatar

Where the line is will of course depend on the issue in question. Utilitarians can't draw any in principle line, as everything will hinge on the contingent facts, but that doesn't mean that there is no line, or that any slippery slope follows--the line is simply where the greatest utility is.

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MJR Schneider's avatar

Yes, although it often happens that when some utilitarian like Mill or Parfit comes up with some sophisticated solution to an ethical conundrum, like the repugnant conclusion, other edgier utilitarians just disregard it and bite the bullet. It seems like the EA community in particular just bites every single bullet rather than find ways of avoiding the most unpleasant outcomes of their ideology.

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Michael A Alexander's avatar

What a copout. No answer given to the boat question. I'll bite.

I would say the grandparent and the captain are the most sensible choices as there would be the least objections about it. Traditionally the captain goes down with the ship so he should choose to stay behind and die. The grandparent has the fewest years of life lost.

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Silas Abrahamsen's avatar

Sounds reasonable. Definitely the senior, less obvious with the captain, I think.

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Ken Kovar's avatar

But the captain crashed the ship so down he goes 😁

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Michael A Alexander's avatar

I weighed that considering his seaman knowledge could be useful. But the nurse and lifeguad has obvious skilleds and several others were couple that I did not want to split. So potential candidates ran out quickly. The pregnant woman was sort of twofer, so that too made sense to keep.

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ama's avatar

There are 10 individuals though?

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Jon Rogers's avatar

Surprised you didn’t include the term: thought terminating cliches.

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Concentrator's avatar

Agree with the overarching sentiment about avoiding difficult ethical decisions, especially when accompanied by attempts to seem smart or moralise.

But "question the premises" and "don't reflexively assume that you need to/should be making severe judgements because of what you've been told (or making them in a particular way)" parts are important things to teach kids.

I certainly wouldn't want my lifeboat to sink because everyone thought we had 2 too many people when we actually had 4 too many (this version of the scenario reduces the numbers from 10/8 to 8/6 but there's still 10 people listed) or to drown because people didn't consider how precise the person limit for the lifeboat (e.g. was it based on average sized people plus an allowance, while the twins or all 10 people are smaller than average?).

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