If we’re just talking about what I have defensible objections to, I agree with most of this, except that I would also say that human sacrifice is fine as long as everyone involved consents (1).
That said, I nevertheless find the notion of human sacrifice deeply disturbing and I’m confident that my opinion of someone who participated in it would change significantly for the worse if I found out.
I also find most forms of cannibalism disturbing in much the same way, though not quite as extremely, and I can imagine fringe cases that might not disturb me much. The same is true for many forms of bestiality, though it’s much easier to come up with cases that don’t disturb me. (Unsurprisingly, a lot depends on how much I anthropomorphize the animal in question.)
Incest—again, assuming consent (1) -- doesn’t bug me much at all.
==
(1) Admittedly, what counts as consent is not a simple question; I am assuming unambiguous examples of the category here.
I agree with most of this, except that I would also say that human sacrifice is fine as long as everyone involved consents
I notice that this is something that I have instrumental reasons to support. Anybody who considers cryonics to be a rite of ‘nerd religion’ should thereby consider the early, voluntary preservation of someone with Alzheimers a ritual human sacrifice meant to purify them for the afterlife.
A related observation is that, since cryonics can (as you note) be framed as a ‘nerd religion’ form of human sacrifice, social norms opposing human sacrifice can be framed as opposing cryonics as well. It follows that if you support cryonics, you might do well to work against those norms, all else being equal.
I suppose something similar is true of Christian Scientists other sects that reject medical care, whose practices can similarly be framed as a form of human sacrifice. Also people who perform or receive abortions, I guess. We could all band together to form the Coalition to Support Things that Can be Thought of as Resembling Human Sacrifice (Including Of Course Human Sacrifice Itself).
Well, OK, maybe we should have a catchier name.
Also, there should be a convenient term to describe the social process whereby entirely unrelated groups come to share a common cause created entirely by the fact that they are classified similarly by a powerful third party.
Also, there should be a convenient term to describe the social process whereby entirely unrelated groups come to share a common cause created entirely by the fact that they are classified similarly by a powerful third party.
Although assisting suicide seems to be a felony in most states in the US according to wikipedia.
Of course for the majority of people wikipedia page itself is all the assistance they would require.
My discovery of the day: Suicide by locking yourself in the garage with the car on just aint what it used to be. Apparently it was once painless and only minimally unpleasant due to the large amount of carbon monoxide produced. These days, however, we have more efficient engines and catalytic converters. This means you need an awful lot of exhaust fumes to get enough carbon monoxide to kill you—and exhaust fumes still aren’t pleasant.
Evidently it is better to use a barbeque (charcoal burner) than a car if you really want to off yourself with CO.
I don’t much care if suicide is illegal just so long as those that are enabling the suicider aren’t vulnerable to punishment for obvious reasons. Well, unless our legal system is expected to last as is until after recovery from cryopreservation is implemented. That’d be awkward.
Oh, and make autopsies (that include the head) illegal across the board.
I’d support this more confidently if I believed that the legal mechanisms distinguishing “enabling suicide” from “murder” would align well with my own intuitions about the distinction.
Oh, and make autopsies (that include the head) illegal across the board.
This seems like a bad idea as long as most people aren’t getting cryonicly preserved. A lot of what we’ve learned about Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s as well as other forms of brain damage comes from autopsies and we’re still learning. Similarly, in some cases the brain will be severely damaged by the form of death (such as say many cases of blunt trauma) and in some of those cases (such as murder investigations) autopsies may be necessary.
A better version might be to have strong rules about no head autopsy when the next of kin so request or when the person is signed up for some form of preservation such as cryonics or plasiticization.
A better version might be to have strong rules about no head autopsy when the next of kin so request or when the person is signed up for some form of preservation such as cryonics or plasiticization.
I would require that explicit consent be granted by the patient in a will or, if the will does not mention the subject, then require the consent from the next of kin as opposed to requiring the next of kin to actively request that no head-destruction be done. Because cops aren’t going to make it easy for next of kin to hinder their investigation by making such a request but they are almost always going to get permission that is required so that they don’t face criminal charges.
(I don’t have any particular objection to donation of one’s body or brain to science for them to do as they please.)
Hmm. I’m not sure I’d consider that a sacrifice as such, even if I strain myself to view it through a religious frame. Ritual sacrifice seems to cluster around giving up something physical and valuable in order to sanctify some external object or concept; essentially costly signaling of devotion. There’s no external sanctification going on here, and I’m not sure how valuable I’d consider continued life under those circumstances; early cryopreservation seems more like sokushinbutsu or something similar. “Mortification of the flesh” is probably the closest Christian analogy, although it’s not a perfect one.
Giving up the immediate prospect of a conventional life, before and during the process of the disease setting in, to demonstrate faith in future technological developments?
So the objection, if based off this prediction, would be one of paternalism? ie. You think you know better about what they ‘really’ want than they do? (Not that I’m saying you don’t.)
Well, not that alone; but also the fact that sacrifice (as I understand it, at least) is irreversible, so someone who doesn’t want to be sacrificed right now can change their mind, but not vice versa.
They’ve got it wrong you see, it’s not about instant sacrifice, it’s about gradually giving yourself over to the Price, giving only as much as you deserve to give at any one time.
There those people working at industrial jobs, seeming to be accident prone day after day and begging to keep their jobs; they don’t claim workman’s compensation after losing a finger or after a metal fragment pierces their eye.They splash their mouth with alcohol to cover for their “incompetence” or beg not to take a drug test because of their “habit”. Notice how hard working they are, taking every over-time hour they can get. Some or religious and all are hard-working, wanting to keep their job. The upper management seem to turn a blind eye, often belonging to the same social clubs or churches with these model workers. This gradual sacrifice of a body one piece at a time, shows a continued dedication to the Prince. Much more than blindly jumping into a soup pot once.
== (1) Admittedly, what counts as consent is not a simple question; I am assuming unambiguous examples of the category here.
There’s no way that consent could ever be simple or unambiguous here. Wanting to die might be a temporary state of mind, while death is a very permanent effect. The victim would have to be completely unable to change his/her mind ever in his/her life.
I don’t think if a friend asks you to kill him, you should do it. No, clearly your friend needs mental help, and hopefully his suicidal urges are temporary.
I agree with you that consent is not simple… indeed, I said as much in the first place.
That said, I do believe that situations can arise where the expected value to a person of their death (1) is greater than the expected value of the other alternatives available to them. If I understood you, you disagree that such situations can arise, and therefore you believe that in all cases where a person thinks they’re in such a situation they are necessarily mistaken—either they’re wrong about the facts, or they have the wrong values, or both—and therefore it’s better if they’re made to choose some other alternative.
Did I understand you right?
==
(1) For conventional understandings of death. I acknowledge that many people on this site consider, for example, having my brain removed from my skull and cryogenically preserved to not be an example of death, because the potential for reconstituting me still exists. Personally, I’m inclined to still call that death, while allowing for the possibility of technologically mediated resurrection. That said, that’s ultimately a disagreement about words, and not terribly important, as long as we’re clear on what we’re talking about.
That said, I do believe that situations can arise where the expected value to a person of their death (1) is greater than the expected value of the other alternatives available to them. If I understood you, you disagree that such situations can arise, and therefore you believe that in all cases where a person thinks they’re in such a situation they are necessarily mistaken—either they’re wrong about the facts, or they have the wrong values, or both—and therefore it’s better if they’re made to choose some other alternative.
I think people often misjudge situations, especially in relation to ending their own life. And consent in case of permanent damage is probably not sufficient to say anything about morals. If their death actually did have higher value than other options then I suppose it is just a tragic situation.
I agree with you that people often misjudge situations. I don’t agree that this is especially true about ending their own lives. People misjudge all kinds of situations.
I don’t object to using “tragic” to describe cases where someone’s death has higher value than their other options. That said, some examples of that seem far more tragic to me than others. Also, it cuts the other way too. For example, when my grandfather suffered a stroke, nobody expected him to recover, and both he and his loved ones preferred him dead rather than continuing to live bedridden, frequently delirious, and in constant pain. The law prevented us from killing him, though. I consider every day of his life after that point far more tragic than his eventual death.
I agree that knowledge about consent is not always sufficient to make a moral judgment.
I think if we switch from talking about expected-value judgements to moral judgements, we will have to back up a very long way before we can keep making progress, since I’m not sure we have a shared understanding about what a moral judgement even is.
I agree with you that people often misjudge situations. I don’t agree that this is especially true about ending their own lives.
I have experienced a Cartesian-demon-like urge to rationalise “I should kill myself”. While similar dispositions exist in e.g. anosognosics, I expect situations that cause them are rare.
I don’t object to using “tragic” to describe cases where someone’s death has higher value than their other options. That said, some examples of that seem far more tragic to me than others.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant to say that if their death had higher value then I would agree that it would be the better decision. It is tragic that there are no positive solutions, and only negative ones.
I agree with you that people often misjudge situations. I don’t agree that this is especially true about ending their own lives. People misjudge all kinds of situations.
Consider the situations where people consider suicide. They often are depressed, desperate, and mentally unstable. Sometimes there is a euphoric response when people decide that everything will be over soon. Obviously, I can’t think of any statistics or anything, so I guess we just have to disagree.
I’m content to disagree, but I’m not sure we even do.
Certainly I agree with you that people often misjudge the decision to end their own lives, often for the reasons you cite.
What I’m saying is that, for example, people who are depressed, desperate, and mentally unstable also make decisions about whether to get out of bed, whether to go to work, whether to take their medication, whether to talk to friends about what’s going on in their lives, whether to take psychoactive drugs, whether to get more sleep, whether to exercise regularly, whether to punch their neighbor in the head, whether to buy revolvers, and on and on and on.
I don’t believe that such people are any more reliable when making those decisions than they are when making the decision to end their own lives. People misjudge all kinds of situations.
We suck at these decisions, but the consequences tend to be significantly more severe. Good defaults before the unstability starts also help; for example, “go to work” is much more likely to be on the radar at all than “punch someone out of the blue”.
But to address your point: yup, there are specific bugs that are triggered solely by considering suicide. Though how you’d measure their frequency I don’t know.
I agree that the consequences of an incorrect decision about dying are severe compared to most of the other decisions we make.
I agree that there are specific bugs that are differentially triggered by considering suicide. There are also specific bugs that are differentially triggered by considering all kinds of other things.
I agree that existing predispositions to explicitly consider/not consider certain decisions, and to decide them in particular ways, affect how we make those decisions.
I don’t believe that such people are any more reliable when making those decisions than they are when making the decision to end their own lives. People misjudge all kinds of situations.
And that’s where we disagree. I don’t think suicidal people are just as reliable in their decision-making as others.
I recommend that you take a break from this thread, go think about something else for a while, come back to what I said, and see if you still believe I’m making a claim about comparisons between two groups of people.
If you do, then I agree that we should end this discussion here.
I don’t know. I mentioned before there is a euphoric response to having things finally end in peace. This is why so many people can believe in something like the rapture. It’s not a frightening thought. They get caught up in the idea that everything will be all right. Suicide sounds like it would trigger that appeal as well, so I’m still inclined to disagree.
I’m glad you’re now seeing what I said. It makes useful discussion much easier.
I share your belief that such an anticipation of relief might be triggered by contemplating suicide. That has certainly been my experience, at least.
I infer (though not very confidently) that you believe such anticipation is a more powerful motivator than various other feelings such people have that cause them to make unreliable decisions in other contexts. If you do in fact believe that, then yes, we disagree.
If we’re just talking about what I have defensible objections to, I agree with most of this, except that I would also say that human sacrifice is fine as long as everyone involved consents (1).
That said, I nevertheless find the notion of human sacrifice deeply disturbing and I’m confident that my opinion of someone who participated in it would change significantly for the worse if I found out.
I also find most forms of cannibalism disturbing in much the same way, though not quite as extremely, and I can imagine fringe cases that might not disturb me much. The same is true for many forms of bestiality, though it’s much easier to come up with cases that don’t disturb me. (Unsurprisingly, a lot depends on how much I anthropomorphize the animal in question.)
Incest—again, assuming consent (1) -- doesn’t bug me much at all.
== (1) Admittedly, what counts as consent is not a simple question; I am assuming unambiguous examples of the category here.
I notice that this is something that I have instrumental reasons to support. Anybody who considers cryonics to be a rite of ‘nerd religion’ should thereby consider the early, voluntary preservation of someone with Alzheimers a ritual human sacrifice meant to purify them for the afterlife.
Legalize human sacrifice!
Fair point.
A related observation is that, since cryonics can (as you note) be framed as a ‘nerd religion’ form of human sacrifice, social norms opposing human sacrifice can be framed as opposing cryonics as well. It follows that if you support cryonics, you might do well to work against those norms, all else being equal.
I suppose something similar is true of Christian Scientists other sects that reject medical care, whose practices can similarly be framed as a form of human sacrifice. Also people who perform or receive abortions, I guess. We could all band together to form the Coalition to Support Things that Can be Thought of as Resembling Human Sacrifice (Including Of Course Human Sacrifice Itself).
Well, OK, maybe we should have a catchier name.
Also, there should be a convenient term to describe the social process whereby entirely unrelated groups come to share a common cause created entirely by the fact that they are classified similarly by a powerful third party.
Good idea!
I submit “social reification” in the mild hope that someone will improve on it.
I thought the word was “politics.”
A lot of things are ‘politics’. More specific names are also handy.
I think khafra’s comment was intended more for snark than for a serious submission.
“Bootleggers and baptists” is a related concept.
Hell, just legalize suicide. :P
If you commit suicide it’s not like you’re going to jail.
Besides, the policy against suicide attempts is usually psychological treatment not jailtime or something.
Although assisting suicide seems to be a felony in most states in the US according to wikipedia.
Of course for the majority of people wikipedia page itself is all the assistance they would require.
My discovery of the day: Suicide by locking yourself in the garage with the car on just aint what it used to be. Apparently it was once painless and only minimally unpleasant due to the large amount of carbon monoxide produced. These days, however, we have more efficient engines and catalytic converters. This means you need an awful lot of exhaust fumes to get enough carbon monoxide to kill you—and exhaust fumes still aren’t pleasant.
Evidently it is better to use a barbeque (charcoal burner) than a car if you really want to off yourself with CO.
(nods) My dad once attempted and failed to kill himself by the former method and reported something similar.
I don’t much care if suicide is illegal just so long as those that are enabling the suicider aren’t vulnerable to punishment for obvious reasons. Well, unless our legal system is expected to last as is until after recovery from cryopreservation is implemented. That’d be awkward.
Oh, and make autopsies (that include the head) illegal across the board.
I’d support this more confidently if I believed that the legal mechanisms distinguishing “enabling suicide” from “murder” would align well with my own intuitions about the distinction.
This seems like a bad idea as long as most people aren’t getting cryonicly preserved. A lot of what we’ve learned about Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s as well as other forms of brain damage comes from autopsies and we’re still learning. Similarly, in some cases the brain will be severely damaged by the form of death (such as say many cases of blunt trauma) and in some of those cases (such as murder investigations) autopsies may be necessary.
A better version might be to have strong rules about no head autopsy when the next of kin so request or when the person is signed up for some form of preservation such as cryonics or plasiticization.
I would require that explicit consent be granted by the patient in a will or, if the will does not mention the subject, then require the consent from the next of kin as opposed to requiring the next of kin to actively request that no head-destruction be done. Because cops aren’t going to make it easy for next of kin to hinder their investigation by making such a request but they are almost always going to get permission that is required so that they don’t face criminal charges.
(I don’t have any particular objection to donation of one’s body or brain to science for them to do as they please.)
Hmm. I’m not sure I’d consider that a sacrifice as such, even if I strain myself to view it through a religious frame. Ritual sacrifice seems to cluster around giving up something physical and valuable in order to sanctify some external object or concept; essentially costly signaling of devotion. There’s no external sanctification going on here, and I’m not sure how valuable I’d consider continued life under those circumstances; early cryopreservation seems more like sokushinbutsu or something similar. “Mortification of the flesh” is probably the closest Christian analogy, although it’s not a perfect one.
Giving up the immediate prospect of a conventional life, before and during the process of the disease setting in, to demonstrate faith in future technological developments?
I’d assign a high probability (about 80%) that a random person consenting to being sacrificed would not do so if they knew more, thought faster, and were more the person they wished they were.
But clearly the person they wished they were is someone who has been sacrificed!
A relationships thread on a rationality site has become a discussion of human sacrifice? :-)
We’re anticipating the post where he talks about compromise.
So the objection, if based off this prediction, would be one of paternalism? ie. You think you know better about what they ‘really’ want than they do? (Not that I’m saying you don’t.)
Well, not that alone; but also the fact that sacrifice (as I understand it, at least) is irreversible, so someone who doesn’t want to be sacrificed right now can change their mind, but not vice versa.
What about a sacrifice which takes place incrementally over a period of years?
Like what?
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?363769-nMage-the-other-99-999-Leaves&p=11220674#post11220674
Also, human sacrifice is creepy!
I think that’s enormously underconfident. That said, I’m also not sure why it matters.
There’s no way that consent could ever be simple or unambiguous here. Wanting to die might be a temporary state of mind, while death is a very permanent effect. The victim would have to be completely unable to change his/her mind ever in his/her life.
I don’t think if a friend asks you to kill him, you should do it. No, clearly your friend needs mental help, and hopefully his suicidal urges are temporary.
I agree with you that consent is not simple… indeed, I said as much in the first place.
That said, I do believe that situations can arise where the expected value to a person of their death (1) is greater than the expected value of the other alternatives available to them. If I understood you, you disagree that such situations can arise, and therefore you believe that in all cases where a person thinks they’re in such a situation they are necessarily mistaken—either they’re wrong about the facts, or they have the wrong values, or both—and therefore it’s better if they’re made to choose some other alternative.
Did I understand you right?
==
(1) For conventional understandings of death. I acknowledge that many people on this site consider, for example, having my brain removed from my skull and cryogenically preserved to not be an example of death, because the potential for reconstituting me still exists. Personally, I’m inclined to still call that death, while allowing for the possibility of technologically mediated resurrection. That said, that’s ultimately a disagreement about words, and not terribly important, as long as we’re clear on what we’re talking about.
I think people often misjudge situations, especially in relation to ending their own life. And consent in case of permanent damage is probably not sufficient to say anything about morals. If their death actually did have higher value than other options then I suppose it is just a tragic situation.
I agree with you that people often misjudge situations. I don’t agree that this is especially true about ending their own lives. People misjudge all kinds of situations.
I don’t object to using “tragic” to describe cases where someone’s death has higher value than their other options. That said, some examples of that seem far more tragic to me than others. Also, it cuts the other way too. For example, when my grandfather suffered a stroke, nobody expected him to recover, and both he and his loved ones preferred him dead rather than continuing to live bedridden, frequently delirious, and in constant pain. The law prevented us from killing him, though. I consider every day of his life after that point far more tragic than his eventual death.
I agree that knowledge about consent is not always sufficient to make a moral judgment.
I think if we switch from talking about expected-value judgements to moral judgements, we will have to back up a very long way before we can keep making progress, since I’m not sure we have a shared understanding about what a moral judgement even is.
I have experienced a Cartesian-demon-like urge to rationalise “I should kill myself”. While similar dispositions exist in e.g. anosognosics, I expect situations that cause them are rare.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant to say that if their death had higher value then I would agree that it would be the better decision. It is tragic that there are no positive solutions, and only negative ones.
Consider the situations where people consider suicide. They often are depressed, desperate, and mentally unstable. Sometimes there is a euphoric response when people decide that everything will be over soon. Obviously, I can’t think of any statistics or anything, so I guess we just have to disagree.
I’m content to disagree, but I’m not sure we even do.
Certainly I agree with you that people often misjudge the decision to end their own lives, often for the reasons you cite.
What I’m saying is that, for example, people who are depressed, desperate, and mentally unstable also make decisions about whether to get out of bed, whether to go to work, whether to take their medication, whether to talk to friends about what’s going on in their lives, whether to take psychoactive drugs, whether to get more sleep, whether to exercise regularly, whether to punch their neighbor in the head, whether to buy revolvers, and on and on and on.
I don’t believe that such people are any more reliable when making those decisions than they are when making the decision to end their own lives. People misjudge all kinds of situations.
We suck at these decisions, but the consequences tend to be significantly more severe. Good defaults before the unstability starts also help; for example, “go to work” is much more likely to be on the radar at all than “punch someone out of the blue”.
But to address your point: yup, there are specific bugs that are triggered solely by considering suicide. Though how you’d measure their frequency I don’t know.
I agree that the consequences of an incorrect decision about dying are severe compared to most of the other decisions we make.
I agree that there are specific bugs that are differentially triggered by considering suicide. There are also specific bugs that are differentially triggered by considering all kinds of other things.
I agree that existing predispositions to explicitly consider/not consider certain decisions, and to decide them in particular ways, affect how we make those decisions.
And that’s where we disagree. I don’t think suicidal people are just as reliable in their decision-making as others.
I recommend that you take a break from this thread, go think about something else for a while, come back to what I said, and see if you still believe I’m making a claim about comparisons between two groups of people.
If you do, then I agree that we should end this discussion here.
When I was in a similar circumstance I had to try very hard to stop myself from making puns on DoubleReed.
That didn’t even occur to me. (hat-tip)
Oh snap.
Oh I see what you’re saying.
I don’t know. I mentioned before there is a euphoric response to having things finally end in peace. This is why so many people can believe in something like the rapture. It’s not a frightening thought. They get caught up in the idea that everything will be all right. Suicide sounds like it would trigger that appeal as well, so I’m still inclined to disagree.
I’m glad you’re now seeing what I said. It makes useful discussion much easier.
I share your belief that such an anticipation of relief might be triggered by contemplating suicide. That has certainly been my experience, at least.
I infer (though not very confidently) that you believe such anticipation is a more powerful motivator than various other feelings such people have that cause them to make unreliable decisions in other contexts. If you do in fact believe that, then yes, we disagree.
The meaning of this ‘consent’ term seems to be drifting closer and closer to ‘whatever it takes for the action to be considered morally right’.
How so?
Obviously permanent and long-term effects have more issues with consent. I don’t see how that’s particularly wishy-washy.
Edit: If anything I’m declaring a harsh limit on how far consent goes. It is insufficient for certain moral situations.