If sacrifice of myself was necessary to (hope to?) save the person mentioned, I hope that I would {be consistent with my current perception of my likely actions} and go through with it, though I do not claim complete certainty of my actions.
If those that would die from the hypothetical disease were the soon-to-die-anyway (very elderly/infirm), I would likely choose to spend my time on more significant areas of research (life extension, more-fatal/-painful diseases).
If all other significant areas had been dealt with or were being adequately dealt with, perhaps rendering the disease the only remaining ailment that humanity suffered from, I might carry out the research for the sake of completeness. I might also wait a few decades depending on whether or not it would be fixed even without doing so.
A problem here is that the more inconvenient I make one decision, the more convenient I make the other. If I jump ahead to a hypothetical cases where the choices were completely balanced either way, I might just flip a coin, since I presumably wouldn’t care which one I took.
Then again, the stacking could be chosen such that no matter which I took it would be emotionally devastating… that though conveniently (hah) comprises such a slim fraction of all possibilities that I gain by assuming there to always be some aspect that would make a difference or which could be exploited in some way, given that if there were then I could find it and make a sound decision and that if the weren’t my position would not in fact change (by the nature of the balanced setup).
Stepping back and considering the least-convenient consideration argument, I notice that its primary function may be to get people to accept two options as both conceivable in different circumstances, rather than rejecting one on technicalities. If I already acknowledge that I would be inclined to make a different choice depending on different circumstances, am I freed from that application I wonder?
Assume the least-convenient possible world. It’s not like this one is fair either...
Indeed. nods
If sacrifice of myself was necessary to (hope to?) save the person mentioned, I hope that I would {be consistent with my current perception of my likely actions} and go through with it, though I do not claim complete certainty of my actions.
If those that would die from the hypothetical disease were the soon-to-die-anyway (very elderly/infirm), I would likely choose to spend my time on more significant areas of research (life extension, more-fatal/-painful diseases).
If all other significant areas had been dealt with or were being adequately dealt with, perhaps rendering the disease the only remaining ailment that humanity suffered from, I might carry out the research for the sake of completeness. I might also wait a few decades depending on whether or not it would be fixed even without doing so.
A problem here is that the more inconvenient I make one decision, the more convenient I make the other. If I jump ahead to a hypothetical cases where the choices were completely balanced either way, I might just flip a coin, since I presumably wouldn’t care which one I took.
Then again, the stacking could be chosen such that no matter which I took it would be emotionally devastating… that though conveniently (hah) comprises such a slim fraction of all possibilities that I gain by assuming there to always be some aspect that would make a difference or which could be exploited in some way, given that if there were then I could find it and make a sound decision and that if the weren’t my position would not in fact change (by the nature of the balanced setup).
Stepping back and considering the least-convenient consideration argument, I notice that its primary function may be to get people to accept two options as both conceivable in different circumstances, rather than rejecting one on technicalities. If I already acknowledge that I would be inclined to make a different choice depending on different circumstances, am I freed from that application I wonder?