Well… for people who say they don’t anticipate ever actually finding themselves in trolley problems, I’d say I don’t think it’s that hard to find someone willing to give you $10,000 to murder someone and then give the money to the Against Malaria Foundation.
(No, I wouldn’t do that, even if I think the (CDT) expected utility of that would be positive: ethical injunctions and all that, plus a suspect that the net RDT consequences of precommitting to never do contract killing would be positive.)
Okay, now how about you’re not directly involved in the killing in any way? You just make it easier for other people to do the killing. I guess a good analogy is that you invent a firearm or a poison that cannot be used in self-defense, and can only be used for murder. What do the ethics of selling it openly look like?
Well… for people who say they don’t anticipate ever actually finding themselves in trolley problems, I’d say I don’t think it’s that hard to find someone willing to give you $10,000 to murder someone and then give the money to the Against Malaria Foundation.
(No, I wouldn’t do that, even if I think the (CDT) expected utility of that would be positive: ethical injunctions and all that, plus a suspect that the net RDT consequences of precommitting to never do contract killing would be positive.)
Okay, now how about you’re not directly involved in the killing in any way? You just make it easier for other people to do the killing. I guess a good analogy is that you invent a firearm or a poison that cannot be used in self-defense, and can only be used for murder. What do the ethics of selling it openly look like?
A military-industrial complex. That’s what it looks like.