This is a linkpost for /r/discussion/lw/o8q/unspeakable_conversations/
I read the entire article. What irks me about these type of debates, between a lawyer and a philosopher of ethics, is that they center around creating a consistent 'logical structure' or trying to define the right types of preferences purely from reason.
The author uses lots of lawyer arguments that focus on rhetoric, but are nonsensical. She is 'worse off' in the sense that she would probably prefer to not be disabled. Rationalizing that society would take care of disabled people, for pay (freeing the family from a life of caregiving) only side-steps the issue that resources still need to be expended that could be used on something else.
I think they could debate forever, because there is no right answer. It's a measurement question with a very flat optimization function. How do you measure the cost/benefit in such an incredibly high-dimensional and uncertain question?
Thankfully (hopefully), the real progress towards this solution is being worked on by bioengineers, not by these debates.
I linked to this article because it is an example of almost a completely foreign way of looking at the world (at least to most Less Wrongers)
I've been trying to put into words why this article is so strange, and I think I figured it out. Peter Singer is making a logical argument, but the author is arguing that making Singer's argument is immoral. Neither of them realize that the author is arguing one meta-level up, so they're just talking past each-other.
I think the author's argument is basically that Singer is making a lot of assumptions that don't apply in the real world, and if people accept the argument, they are likely to mistakenly believe that it applies to the real world. For example, politicians are unlikely to understand the difference between "in a perfect world, disabled people should be able to get assistance killing themselves" and "it should be legal to assist disabled people in killing themselves". At first I was annoyed by the author not understanding logic (like how they brag about making an emotional argument to philosophy students), but now I'm even more annoyed by philosophers not realizing that "in a perfect world" arguments can have bad real-world effects.
It's disappointing that even experts can have trouble understanding (or discussing) the viewpoints in their fields.
This part caught my attention [emphasis mine]:
In general, he says, the movement fights for our right to control our own lives; when we need assistance to effect our choices, assistance should be available to us as a matter of right. If the choice is to end our lives, he says, we should have assistance then as well. But [...] it is differential treatment -- disability discrimination -- to try to prevent most suicides while facilitating the suicides of ill and disabled people. [...] The case for assisted suicide rests on stereotypes that our lives are inherently so bad that it is entirely rational if we want to die.
This is an example of a frequent pattern where people defend their decisions by citing abstract priciples, and trying to make a debate about those abstract principles, while the real issue is actually their selective application.
(Like, instead of admitting that I simply choose between some actions A and B depending on how I feel at the moment, I will rather invent two sophisticated ethical explanations, one saying it is right to always do A, the other saying it is right to always do B, and then whenever I have to make a choice, depending on how I feel at the moment I will choose one of these abstract principles, and use it to defend my choice as a special case of always doing the right thing.)
EDIT:
Another -- completely unrelated -- interesting thing is the undertone of the article, where on some level we are observing an interaction between the author and Singer, but on a different level it's like an interaction between {Carol Gill, sister Beth} and Singer, where the author is just a mediator and observer.