Okay, let me clarify a little. If you ask some people what they think of someone who’s killed 25 people, and you ask a similar group what they think of someone who’s killed 50 people, you’re going to get responses that are not meaningfully different. Nobody’s going to advocate a more severe punishment for the 50-person killer, or say that he should be ostracized twice as much (because they’ve already decided the 25 person killer gets max and you can’t go above max), or that they would be happy with dating the 25 person killer but not the 50 person killer, or that only half the police should be used to try to catch the 25 person killer.
It seems like you would say “We have already decided you are maximally evil, so if you turn back from this course of action, or follow through, it won’t make any difference to our assessment.”
Nobody will say that. But they’ll behave that way.
when the mass murder stops killing people
Which is the equivalent of completely avoiding meat, not of eating less meat.
(And to the extent that vegetarians don’t behave with meat-eaters like they would with human killers, I’d say they don’t alieve that meat-eaters are like human killers.)
I agree completely that your focus groups are going to give similar responses. I especially enjoy your dating example. “Oh, George you haven’t! When you were only a 25 fold murderer I could look the other way, but I don’t think I can marry a man who has killed 26 people.”
Okay, let me clarify a little. If you ask some people what they think of someone who’s killed 25 people, and you ask a similar group what they think of someone who’s killed 50 people, you’re going to get responses that are not meaningfully different. Nobody’s going to advocate a more severe punishment for the 50-person killer, or say that he should be ostracized twice as much (because they’ve already decided the 25 person killer gets max and you can’t go above max), or that they would be happy with dating the 25 person killer but not the 50 person killer, or that only half the police should be used to try to catch the 25 person killer.
Nobody will say that. But they’ll behave that way.
Which is the equivalent of completely avoiding meat, not of eating less meat.
(And to the extent that vegetarians don’t behave with meat-eaters like they would with human killers, I’d say they don’t alieve that meat-eaters are like human killers.)
I agree completely that your focus groups are going to give similar responses. I especially enjoy your dating example. “Oh, George you haven’t! When you were only a 25 fold murderer I could look the other way, but I don’t think I can marry a man who has killed 26 people.”