If someone claims to believe thousands of equivalent-person deaths are occurring every day and being ignored, even facilitated by society, and ey doesn’t do the research and optimize, I have a difficult time finding em to be sincere.
Pavitra makes the important point:
there are many people who do so
This actually seems to describe on the order of every member of the “pro-life” movement.
I’m pretty confident that human societies are facilitating huge numbers of actual deaths of adult human beings as we speak, but I don’t devote much of my time to figuring out how many—indeed, I wouldn’t hazard a confident guess as to order of magnitude—or where or who or how to stop it.
You’d certainly have grounds to challenge my sincerity if I claimed to care about their deaths, though I think it’s more complicated than that.
But do you really challenge the sincerity of my claim that I believe those deaths are happening?
If someone claims to believe thousands of equivalent-person deaths are occurring every day and being ignored, even facilitated by society, and ey doesn’t do the research and optimize, I have a difficult time finding em to be sincere.
Pavitra makes the important point:
This actually seems to describe on the order of every member of the “pro-life” movement.
Mm?
I’m pretty confident that human societies are facilitating huge numbers of actual deaths of adult human beings as we speak, but I don’t devote much of my time to figuring out how many—indeed, I wouldn’t hazard a confident guess as to order of magnitude—or where or who or how to stop it.
You’d certainly have grounds to challenge my sincerity if I claimed to care about their deaths, though I think it’s more complicated than that.
But do you really challenge the sincerity of my claim that I believe those deaths are happening?
No.
Society and societies aren’t quite the same thing. I’m referring to the specific society in which the person resides and acts.
The distinction between believing the deaths are happening and caring about the deaths is an important one. I should have been clearer.