Phil Robertson is being criticized for a thought experiment in which an atheist’s family is raped and murdered. On a talk show, he accused atheists of believing that there was no such thing as objective right or wrong, then continued:
I’ll make a bet with you. Two guys break into an atheist’s home. He has a little atheist wife and two little atheist daughters. Two guys break into his home and tie him up in a chair and gag him.
Then they take his two daughters in front of him and rape both of them and then shoot them, and they take his wife and then decapitate her head off in front of him, and then they can look at him and say, ‘Isn’t it great that I don’t have to worry about being judged? Isn’t it great that there’s nothing wrong with this? There’s no right or wrong, now, is it dude?’
Then you take a sharp knife and take his manhood and hold it in front of him and say, ‘Wouldn’t it be something if [there] was something wrong with this? But you’re the one who says there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong, so we’re just having fun. We’re sick in the head, have a nice day.’
If it happened to them, they probably would say, ‘Something about this just ain’t right’.
The media has completely proportionally described this as Robinson “fantasizing about” raping atheists, and there are the usual calls for him to apologize/get fired/be beheaded.
So let me use whatever credibility I have as a guy with a philosophy degree to confirm that Phil Robertson is doing moral philosophy exactly right.
Like many Less Wrong readers, I greatly enjoy Slate Star Codex; there's a large overlap in readership. However, the comments there are far worse, not worth reading for me. I think this is in part due to the lack of LW-style up and downvotes. Have there ever been discussion threads about SSC posts here on LW? What do people think of the idea occasionally having them? Does Scott himself have any views on this, and would he be OK with it?
Scott/Yvain's permission to repost on LW was granted (from facebook):
I'm fine with anyone who wants reposting things for comments on LW, except for posts where I specifically say otherwise or tag them with "things i will regret writing"
What changes is that I would like to have a million dollars as much as Joe would. Similarly, if I had to trade between Joe's desire to live and my own, the latter would win.
In another comment you claim that I do not believe my own argument. This is false. I know this because if we suppose that Joe would like to be killed, and Joe's friends would not be said if he died, then I am okay with Joe's death. So there is no other hidden factor that moves me.
I'm not sure what the observation that I do not give all of my money away to charity has to do with anything.
A rule whereby you do not kill people without their consent is much easier to implement, and results in many fewer bad consequences (including perverse incentives), than a rule whereby you do not refuse to give people a million dollars without their consent.
6WinterShaker
A million dollars is a lot more zero-sum than not killing someone - if I give you a million dollars I lose a million dollars. To make the analogy more accurate, you'd need to stipulate that Joe will kill me if I don't kill him.
Also, I don't think it's fair to ignore the fact that for most people, not killing someone is vastly easier to do at non-self-destructive costs. I appreciate that this is a quantitative argument rather than a categorical counterargument, but if we have atheists who base their sense of morality on a vague consequentialism that they can't quite fully articulate, that's still no worse than Robertson's (presumed) divine command theory, and they should be able to make such such arguments without being accused of hypocrisy for not also advocating actions that would score much worse under their vague consequentialism.
Link to Blog Post: "Extremism in Thought Experiments is No Vice"
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This is a LW discussion post for Yvain's blog posts at Slate Star Codex, as per tog's suggestion:
Scott/Yvain's permission to repost on LW was granted (from facebook):