Laura ABJ: To expand on the text you quoted, I think that killing babies is ugly, and therefore would not do it without sufficient reason, which I don’t think the scenario provides. The ugliness of killing babies doesn’t need a moral explanation, and the moral explanation just builds on (and adds nothing but a more convenient way of speaking about) the foundation of aversion, no matter how it’s dressed up and made to look like something else.
The idea is not compelling to me and so would not haunt me forever, because like I said, I’m not yet convinced that some X number of refreshing breezes on a hot day is strictly equivalent in some non-arbitrary sense to murdering a baby, and X+1 breezes is “better” in some non-arbitrary sense.
However, the idea of being haunted forever would bother me now if I thought it likely that my future self would think I made the wrong decision, but that implies that I have more knowledge and perspective now than I actually have (in order to know enough to think it likely that I’ll be haunted). All I can do is make what I think is the best decision given what I know and understand now, so I don’t see that I could think it likely that I would be haunted by what I did. Of course, I could make a terrible mistake, not having understood something I will later think I should have understood, and I might regret that forever, but I wouldn’t realize that at the time and I wouldn’t think it likely.
Laura ABJ: To expand on the text you quoted, I think that killing babies is ugly, and therefore would not do it without sufficient reason, which I don’t think the scenario provides. The ugliness of killing babies doesn’t need a moral explanation, and the moral explanation just builds on (and adds nothing but a more convenient way of speaking about) the foundation of aversion, no matter how it’s dressed up and made to look like something else.
The idea is not compelling to me and so would not haunt me forever, because like I said, I’m not yet convinced that some X number of refreshing breezes on a hot day is strictly equivalent in some non-arbitrary sense to murdering a baby, and X+1 breezes is “better” in some non-arbitrary sense.
However, the idea of being haunted forever would bother me now if I thought it likely that my future self would think I made the wrong decision, but that implies that I have more knowledge and perspective now than I actually have (in order to know enough to think it likely that I’ll be haunted). All I can do is make what I think is the best decision given what I know and understand now, so I don’t see that I could think it likely that I would be haunted by what I did. Of course, I could make a terrible mistake, not having understood something I will later think I should have understood, and I might regret that forever, but I wouldn’t realize that at the time and I wouldn’t think it likely.