My first thought wasn’t the mustache-twirling villain, it was Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”. It sets up the sadistic conclusion (targeted at one severely neglected child in a utopia), but doesn’t give a mechanism for why it would work that way.
In general, do the people who believe in the sadistic conclusion give a mechanism?
No mechanisms, generally—just as there’s no explanation why people keep on getting tied to tracks, often in groups of five, in front of hurtling trolleys...
My first thought wasn’t the mustache-twirling villain, it was Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”. It sets up the sadistic conclusion (targeted at one severely neglected child in a utopia), but doesn’t give a mechanism for why it would work that way.
In general, do the people who believe in the sadistic conclusion give a mechanism?
No mechanisms, generally—just as there’s no explanation why people keep on getting tied to tracks, often in groups of five, in front of hurtling trolleys...
Trolley problems are explicitly presented as thought experiments.
So is the sadist conclusion—that specific issues hasn’t come up in reality, though analogues may have (similar to the trolley problem)