Yes- which is exactly Alicorn’s point. If she had had more time, she could have persuaded the girl to carry on being a donor by pointing out these facts, but she didn’t, so she resorted to this ‘light art’.
Alicorn’s point seems to be that since she didn’t have time to explain everything to this woman, she used arguments “which use premises you don’t hold that your opponent does”, in order to persuade her that her POV was absurd. She says that even if we grant this woman the falsehood that doctors are consequentialists, the woman’s own reasoning will show that doctors will not sacrifice her for her organs, “as long as she can present proof to evil consequentialist doctors that she’s worth more alive than dead. And she can.”
I don’t see how someone can present this proof if she’s out cold, and I don’t think that the woman’s beliefs about organ donation are necessarily absurd unless you grant that she has a certain amount of factual knowledge about the process. I also don’t see how Alicorn’s joke would persuade anyone in this woman’s position that being an organ donor was safe, unless they actually believed that blood was a sufficiently valuable commodity that doctors would keep them alive in order to take it (this would involve a very large time horizon on the doctors part). As such, I don’t believe this anecdote was a very good illustration of the ‘light arts’ Alicorn was trying to advocate, though I would agree that her general point is valid.
Yes- which is exactly Alicorn’s point. If she had had more time, she could have persuaded the girl to carry on being a donor by pointing out these facts, but she didn’t, so she resorted to this ‘light art’.
Alicorn’s point seems to be that since she didn’t have time to explain everything to this woman, she used arguments “which use premises you don’t hold that your opponent does”, in order to persuade her that her POV was absurd. She says that even if we grant this woman the falsehood that doctors are consequentialists, the woman’s own reasoning will show that doctors will not sacrifice her for her organs, “as long as she can present proof to evil consequentialist doctors that she’s worth more alive than dead. And she can.”
I don’t see how someone can present this proof if she’s out cold, and I don’t think that the woman’s beliefs about organ donation are necessarily absurd unless you grant that she has a certain amount of factual knowledge about the process. I also don’t see how Alicorn’s joke would persuade anyone in this woman’s position that being an organ donor was safe, unless they actually believed that blood was a sufficiently valuable commodity that doctors would keep them alive in order to take it (this would involve a very large time horizon on the doctors part). As such, I don’t believe this anecdote was a very good illustration of the ‘light arts’ Alicorn was trying to advocate, though I would agree that her general point is valid.
By—as I said—carrying a blood donor card. Card-carrying is also how they find out if you’re an organ donor.