Multiheaded, usually I would pay the karma toll to reply to your comment, but I’ve just been karmassasinated and so I’ll put it here instead.
Firstly, while I personally am perfectly capable of reading such material without serious harm (thank God), many people are not, so I was fairly shocked to stumble across it in the middle of your post. It would not have damaged your point to warn those who find such things traumatic beforehand, and neglecting to do so is, to be dark-artsy for a moment, hardly strengthening your claim to be the empathic one in this discussion.
As for whether I would like to live in a world where people are willing to torture me and my loved ones if they think it’s justified—I already live in such a world. This is a thing humans do. Emotional appeals are, in fact, noticeably more effective at getting people to do this than cold utility calculations. So yes, I would rather people based their atrocities on a rigorous epistemic foundation rather than how those guys are The Enemy and must be fought, no matter the cost. For the children!
I’m well aware of the dangers of self-deception, as should anyone trying to make such calculations be. But it’s even easier when you’re relying on outrage rather than rationality.
Finally, it’s interesting that you claim it’s OK to make use of dark arts techniques to (attempt to) manipulate us, because this is so important that the usual LessWrong standards of trying to minimise bias, mindkilling and generally help people discern the correct position rather than the one that’s covered in applause lights. Isn’t truth and so on another precommtment you shouldn’t break just because the expected utility is so high?
So yes, I would rather people based their atrocities on a rigorous epistemic foundation rather than how those guys are The Enemy and must be fought, no matter the cost.
Has such a thing actually happened even once in human history?
Maybe someday, if we manage to raise the sanity waterline enough, and if everyone who tries it doesn’t get denounced as giving aid an comfort to the Enemy for even considering the idea.
EDIT: Possible example:
You should never, ever murder an innocent person who’s helped you, even if it’s the right thing to do; because it’s far more likely that you’ve made a mistake, than that murdering an innocent person who helped you is the right thing to do.
Sound reasonable?
During World War II, it became necessary to destroy Germany’s supply of deuterium, a neutron moderator, in order to block their attempts to achieve a fission chain reaction. Their supply of deuterium was coming at this point from a captured facility in Norway. A shipment of heavy water was on board a Norwegian ferry ship, the SF Hydro. Knut Haukelid and three others had slipped on board the ferry in order to sabotage it, when the saboteurs were discovered by the ferry watchman. Haukelid told him that they were escaping the Gestapo, and the watchman immediately agreed to overlook their presence. Haukelid “considered warning their benefactor but decided that might endanger the mission and only thanked him and shook his hand.” (Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb.) So the civilian ferry Hydro sank in the deepest part of the lake, with eighteen dead and twenty-nine survivors. Some of the Norwegian rescuers felt that the German soldiers present should be left to drown, but this attitude did not prevail, and four Germans were rescued. And that was, effectively, the end of the Nazi atomic weapons program.
Multiheaded, usually I would pay the karma toll to reply to your comment, but I’ve just been karmassasinated and so I’ll put it here instead.
Firstly, while I personally am perfectly capable of reading such material without serious harm (thank God), many people are not, so I was fairly shocked to stumble across it in the middle of your post. It would not have damaged your point to warn those who find such things traumatic beforehand, and neglecting to do so is, to be dark-artsy for a moment, hardly strengthening your claim to be the empathic one in this discussion.
As for whether I would like to live in a world where people are willing to torture me and my loved ones if they think it’s justified—I already live in such a world. This is a thing humans do. Emotional appeals are, in fact, noticeably more effective at getting people to do this than cold utility calculations. So yes, I would rather people based their atrocities on a rigorous epistemic foundation rather than how those guys are The Enemy and must be fought, no matter the cost. For the children!
I’m well aware of the dangers of self-deception, as should anyone trying to make such calculations be. But it’s even easier when you’re relying on outrage rather than rationality.
Finally, it’s interesting that you claim it’s OK to make use of dark arts techniques to (attempt to) manipulate us, because this is so important that the usual LessWrong standards of trying to minimise bias, mindkilling and generally help people discern the correct position rather than the one that’s covered in applause lights. Isn’t truth and so on another precommtment you shouldn’t break just because the expected utility is so high?
Has such a thing actually happened even once in human history?
Not yet (to my knowledge.)
Maybe someday, if we manage to raise the sanity waterline enough, and if everyone who tries it doesn’t get denounced as giving aid an comfort to the Enemy for even considering the idea.
EDIT: Possible example:
-Ethical Injuctions