I have thought about similar scenarios and with the caveat that I’m speaking from introspection and intuitions and not the real thought pattern I would go through given the real choice, yes, I would be mostly indifferent about the button in the first example and would press it in the second.
Fair enough. It follows that, while for all I know you may be a remarkably pleasant fellow and a great friend, I really hope you don’t ever get any significant amount of power to affect the future state of the world.
Well, how exactly am I supposed to do this? I can’t convincingly pretend to blow up the world, so there’s always this caveat. Like in the case of the trolley problem, I suspect that I would simply freeze or be unable to make any reasonable decision simply due to the extreme stress and signalling problem, regardless of what my current introspection says.
I might be mistaken about myself, but I am certainly honest. I would agree with your judgment that it is sociopathic, as long as its understood in its psychiatric sense and not meaning “not nice” or “doesn’t follow rules”.
I have thought about similar scenarios and with the caveat that I’m speaking from introspection and intuitions and not the real thought pattern I would go through given the real choice, yes, I would be mostly indifferent about the button in the first example and would press it in the second.
Fair enough. It follows that, while for all I know you may be a remarkably pleasant fellow and a great friend, I really hope you don’t ever get any significant amount of power to affect the future state of the world.
In his defense he says:
But since he seems aware of this, he ought to align his “introspection and intuitions” with this.
Well, how exactly am I supposed to do this? I can’t convincingly pretend to blow up the world, so there’s always this caveat. Like in the case of the trolley problem, I suspect that I would simply freeze or be unable to make any reasonable decision simply due to the extreme stress and signalling problem, regardless of what my current introspection says.
Try as I might, I cannot help but regard this statement as either dishonest or sociopathic.
I might be mistaken about myself, but I am certainly honest. I would agree with your judgment that it is sociopathic, as long as its understood in its psychiatric sense and not meaning “not nice” or “doesn’t follow rules”.
Voted up for honesty, not agreement.
Which reminds me of this: