It is seldom wise to engage in discussion that opens with indications aggression. All my replies to your various other accusations still apply in their various context and I do not want to extend them further.
Just explaining the context for finding your current reply interesting (it is true that your statements didn’t convince me, whatever their other qualities or however socially inappropriate this whole line of discussion is).
You threw ‘terminal’ in there gratuitously because it sounds bad.
No, I added this for specificity, because it seems to be the only source of reasons to not mug Hitler, I don’t see how it would be instrumentally incorrect to do so given the problem statement. Hence, one salient hypothesis for why one decides to mug Hitler is that this source of reasons not to do so doesn’t move them (but, obviously, this is just a hypothesis to consider, not strong enough to be believed outright, since there could be other reasons I didn’t consider, or nontrivial implication of this reason that lead to the opposite conclusion, or the reason turns out not to be strong enough).
I can say that I value Hitler having $40 less than me having $40.
Oh, actually I didn’t consider that, if the problem was stated so I’d agree that it’s the thing to do, and the decision would have no Hitler-specificity to it. It would even be an instrumentally good decision, since I could invest the money to cause more goodness that Hitler would (here, some Hitler-specificity is necessary).
But the problem isn’t stated so, it’s not symmetrical, it’s about “ruining his evening”, which a lost opportunity to add $40 to my net worth won’t cause for me.
You can (try to) shame me when it happens.
Irrelevant to my intentions, I’m asking what’s right, not presuming what’s right.
But the problem isn’t stated so, it’s not symmetrical, it’s about “ruining his evening”, which a lost opportunity to add $40 to my net worth won’t cause for me.
I disagree with you on how the problem was stated—“ruining his evening” isn’t the only effect. You also get 40 dollars.
But even with a rephrasing that’d use the words “burning Hitler’s wallet’ instead (so that there’s no benefit of 40 dollars for me) I might value satisfying my sadistic desire to ruin Hitler’s evening more than I valued Hitler keeping his 40 dollars. Or not—it depends how much I tolerated sadism against evil dictators in myself.
That doesn’t mean I would kill Hitler for the emotional satisfaction (always assuming there’s no measurable difference one way or another to future horrors): I value human life (even Hitler’s life) more than I value my brief personal emotional satisfaction at having vengeance done.
Just explaining the context for finding your current reply interesting (it is true that your statements didn’t convince me, whatever their other qualities or however socially inappropriate this whole line of discussion is).
No, I added this for specificity, because it seems to be the only source of reasons to not mug Hitler, I don’t see how it would be instrumentally incorrect to do so given the problem statement. Hence, one salient hypothesis for why one decides to mug Hitler is that this source of reasons not to do so doesn’t move them (but, obviously, this is just a hypothesis to consider, not strong enough to be believed outright, since there could be other reasons I didn’t consider, or nontrivial implication of this reason that lead to the opposite conclusion, or the reason turns out not to be strong enough).
Oh, actually I didn’t consider that, if the problem was stated so I’d agree that it’s the thing to do, and the decision would have no Hitler-specificity to it. It would even be an instrumentally good decision, since I could invest the money to cause more goodness that Hitler would (here, some Hitler-specificity is necessary).
But the problem isn’t stated so, it’s not symmetrical, it’s about “ruining his evening”, which a lost opportunity to add $40 to my net worth won’t cause for me.
Irrelevant to my intentions, I’m asking what’s right, not presuming what’s right.
I disagree with you on how the problem was stated—“ruining his evening” isn’t the only effect. You also get 40 dollars.
But even with a rephrasing that’d use the words “burning Hitler’s wallet’ instead (so that there’s no benefit of 40 dollars for me) I might value satisfying my sadistic desire to ruin Hitler’s evening more than I valued Hitler keeping his 40 dollars. Or not—it depends how much I tolerated sadism against evil dictators in myself.
That doesn’t mean I would kill Hitler for the emotional satisfaction (always assuming there’s no measurable difference one way or another to future horrors): I value human life (even Hitler’s life) more than I value my brief personal emotional satisfaction at having vengeance done.