I’m not disagreeing that crimes are bad, just that this should be stated as saying that whatever utility they gives the perpetrator is overruled by the disutility they give the victim.
That’s kind of the problem I’m getting at. Suppose we could torture one person and film it, creating a superlatively good video that would make N sadists very happy when they watched it, significantly because they value its authenticity. It seems that, if you choose torture over dust specks, you are similarly obliged to choose torture video over no video once N is sufficiently large, whatever sufficiently large means. Interestingly this applies even if there exist very close but inferior substitutes—N just needs to be larger. On the other hand, discounting non-consensual sadism resolves this as don’t torture.
The central problem may be one of measurement, one of incentives (we don’t want people cultivating non-consensual sadistic desires), or a combination of the two. Perhaps my goals are more pragmatic than conceptual.
The central problem may be one of measurement, one of incentives (we don’t want people cultivating non-consensual sadistic desires), or a combination of the two.
I think this is pretty much it. We don’t want people to want to rape coma patients. We don’t want coma-rape to become common enough that people are afraid of having it happen to them. Similarly, if we decide to make this film, everyone has to be afraid that they or someone they know could be the person picked to be tortured, and the idea of torturing innocents becomes more normal. In general, caution should be applied in situations like this, even if no extreme disutility is immediately obvious (See http://lesswrong.com/lw/v0/ethical_inhibitions/).
That’s kind of the problem I’m getting at. Suppose we could torture one person and film it, creating a superlatively good video that would make N sadists very happy when they watched it, significantly because they value its authenticity. It seems that, if you choose torture over dust specks, you are similarly obliged to choose torture video over no video once N is sufficiently large, whatever sufficiently large means. Interestingly this applies even if there exist very close but inferior substitutes—N just needs to be larger. On the other hand, discounting non-consensual sadism resolves this as don’t torture.
The central problem may be one of measurement, one of incentives (we don’t want people cultivating non-consensual sadistic desires), or a combination of the two. Perhaps my goals are more pragmatic than conceptual.
I think this is pretty much it. We don’t want people to want to rape coma patients. We don’t want coma-rape to become common enough that people are afraid of having it happen to them. Similarly, if we decide to make this film, everyone has to be afraid that they or someone they know could be the person picked to be tortured, and the idea of torturing innocents becomes more normal. In general, caution should be applied in situations like this, even if no extreme disutility is immediately obvious (See http://lesswrong.com/lw/v0/ethical_inhibitions/).