47 Comments

I think you are right about this tendency to avoid seeming weird.That is how pogroms and genocides suck everybody in once they have reached a critical mass of participants.

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I am glad I have no friends, so I don't need to worry about "doing the weird thing".

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"I’ll have to check with all of my current girlfriends"

Should I envy Eliezer, or see this as a sign that he really has lost his way?

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The distinction is simply a matter of agency. If you're pet has an illness that will kill it unless you pay $1 million for treatment, the ultimate agent of the pet's death is the disease. Not you.

If, on the other hand, your pet is perfectly healthy and you pay $1 million to kill it, you are the agent responsible for the pet's death.

However you feel about either decision, the reason that the former is more difficult than the latter is because we have a tendency to not want to be the AGENT of someone else's pain (as demonstrated by the trolley experiments).

This makes sense in a social sense, as the social blame (and costs of rejection) falls most harshly on the agent of the wrongdoing, and not on the multitudes of people that could have prevented a wrongdoing.

If a starving child dies in Africa, do we go around blaming every single person that could have helped? Of course not.

Though it makes logical sense to equate murder with a failure to prevent death, it's simply not how we socially judge each other. And since the judgement of other people is such a large factor in any decision we make, our decisions trend toward the more socially acceptable role of passive observer.

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I'll have to check with all of my current girlfriends, but I suspect that every single one of them will immediately say that they'd take the million. If so, I have a new litmus test for dating. Though to be fair, none of them actually have pets at the moment.

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Let me put this in a different light:

I would happily murder my Dog, whom I adore, for a million dollars. That's not even a hard question. "Hi there Doggie *bang* - bye Doggie...".

Sadness and guilt ensue but will pass.

However, I am quite sure there is no possible way that I could torture my Dog for a million dollars.

I have read the comments and links in this post, and I find some of them to be dodging a simple question.

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@Abelard I guess it depends what you mean by 'comfortably'. A lot of US people live well enough on about $30k a year, and so a million dollars is about 30 years of income all at once. Also, 'quit your job' doesn't necessarily mean 'stop doing productive work' - if I could quit my job right now I'd probably start doing work that would make me more money in the long run.

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I think the answer is pretty clear, the rabid anti-tax, pro-life GOP wouldn't raise taxes to save the lives of fetuses, except by putting doctors and women in prison, or killing them.

They don't want public prenatal health care, prenatal nutrition, pre-conception health care, post-birth nutrition, post-birth health care, post-birth education.

They don't want to pay for stuff that is pretty cheap (prenatal and infant care) but have no problem paying for stuff that is expensive (a lifetime of incarceration).

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Quit your job because you have a million? Are you kidding? You need at least $2 million to retire comfortably in the U.S. You can retire someplace cheap in Latin America or S.E. Asia on less than a million, though.

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I've seen a number of blog posts recently from consequentialists who seem to see no difference between "kill" and "allow to die without intervening", even in the case of human deaths. I hope that this is just the result of myopic logic about hypothetical situations, not actual behavior-altering introspection. Otherwise those "get roofied by organ harvesters" urban legends are going to start coming true, with the twist that the black market kidney money will all get used to buy lifesaving malaria nets for impoverished third world countries.

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I've found some of Brin's writing to be interesting, but I don't actually respect him as a thinker.

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At a stage at which the fetus doesn't have functional brain structures yet, it makes sense to give it the ethical status of a vegetable.

When there's pain and consciousness involved... not so much.

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You beg the question: What about a fetus?

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Interesting essay. Let me quote a paragraph near the end,

[L]et me present an example in which most people would definitely take the "million". We presume that, from the previous two points, this is in fact a practically infinite amount, which has actual purpose. Most people will sacrifice their pet, if they are also presented with the choice between their pet, or, for example, their child. The child is only a convenient example, but is illustrative that what is going on in the individual's mind is not a balance between greed and good, as the author seems to be hinting at, but between two values. If the "greater good" can be satisfied, it will be (the majority of the time). In fact there are a great many examples where such a thing would happen, if a million could be sacrificed instead for charity, than for a single animal, or for the betterment of mankind, etc. Put in this light, it is utterly apparent the absurdity and fallacy that there is necessarily a significant greed that would unerringly end the animal's life.

But the bolded part is just what Robin said! If you read Robin's original post, you won't find the word "greed" anywhere. In fact, he does not speculate, or hint at any speculation, about the hypothetical person's motives for killing their pet. He only guesses that they would. In your terms this is equivalent to guessing that many people do have a better idea for what to do with a million dollars than save a pet -- some higher value.

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Age may make a difference. Someone young may have less and a million may represent more to them and offer more possibilities for exploration. I would only accept a million if my pet was near the end anyway as a way to alleviate suffering. My emotional investment would be too high. On the other hand I would consider it if I felt my pet would be better off because that is what love is. I wouldn't spend a million on medical care because life is mortality and it would only be delaying and prolonging the inevitable. Time is short anyway. It could better spent on enjoying time together and on other pets. Alternatives matter but money doesn't mean that much to me anymore.

One question I encountered was whether you would give up all your friends and family for a million. This could be attractive if young, independent, uncommitted, and extroverted but probably becomes much less so over time as you have more invested and it becomes more difficult to replace them.

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Reading comprehension hello; there was nothing normative in this post and no moral justifications for anything. Speculating which people would choose, reveals a lot of hidden preferences. This may come as a shock to you, but how people actually act differs a lot of how they talk. Observing people does not make anyone a sociopath.

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