Someone is wrong on the internet!

[llennhoff]

Lured by a metaquotes post, I was browsing through the antitheism community. I found an example of bad reasoning (in support of a conclusion I agree with *sigh*). I went to post a reply when I discovered that the community only allows members to post. So I thought I would post it here instead:

I saw this question posed in one of the threads from your

Comments

[psychohist]

I'm somewhat very offended at the concept that I'm obligated to save the child no matter what.

What if the child is the school bully who pushed my own child in front of a truck and killed him? What if the embryos contain my own embryos and are my only hope of having another child? I'd save the embryos in a heartbeat, even without considering them to be people.

[llennhoff]

I feel an obligation to save the child if the risk to my own life is not greatly increased thereby. I'm willing to push this idea vigorously, but am unsure if I would join social sanctions against a violator and certainly would not support legislative action to make refusal illegal.

When I consider the hypothetical scenario I assume the median kid is not a murderer. In any event I would save the bully who pushed my kid in front of a truck - I'm not willing to return to a blood feud based society. Choosing between an anonymous child and my future genetic immortality would be trickier, but I hope I would save the actual child in front of me.

[psychohist]

I'm not willing to return to a blood feud based society

That would be grabbing the kid from the outside and tossing him into the fire, not just refraining from saving him.

Edit: maybe I should echo Elizabeth's comment above. My picking the embryos is selfish in a sense, but so is "if the risk to my own life is not greatly increased thereby". You're just valuing your own life higher, while I'm valuing my own future children higher.

[llennhoff]

We may have reached the point where we are just comparing utility functions. For me, an actual human being in front of me(*) has a greater value than the potential life of the embryos - especially since in the majority of cases future embryos can be generated whereas the kid cannot be resurrected, and the kid has a higher degree of known uniqueness than the embryos.

But your hypothetical specified that if you lose these embryos that's it for your reproductive chances. I'd still save the kid, but my reaction to your saving the embryos would be primarily horror at the choice you were forced to make while the feeling you made the wrong choice would be something I would not choose to share after the fact.

(*)let's ignore the child killer case for the moment

[psychohist]

I don't think it's just the utility functions - or at least not in the sense you're looking at. I think the correct comparison in my last comment is not so much between the kid and my embryos as between the embryos and myself. Let's make it one's own kid, and let's take the following three cases

[llennhoff]

I'll need time to digest this, but I have to admit my ignorance that it can take 3 years to get viable embryos. I thought the hard part was getting them reimplanted. Thanks for the education, and my apologies to Elizabeth - I understand her comment much better now.

[psychohist]

Hopefully it will be faster next time, as we can skip some things we now know don't work. Of course, that's balanced by the fact that the chances go down very rapidly with age at Elizabeth's age.

[llennhoff]

I'd suspect my own choices would go 1 3 2 but I have had few enough life endangering crises to be confident in predicting my behavior. Make it a kid instead of the embryos in case 3 and my guess would be 3 1 2. I'm sorry, but 3% chance is too low, especially given the huge error bar in my evaluating the fire. Maybe if my wife and mother were dead I would think differently.

Note that I tend to think immortality through memes is more satisfying than immortality through genes, though I would love the chance to make the comparison. :<( Ultimately I guess I have to go with Woody Allen "Some seek immortality through their kids, others through their art. I'd rather be immortal by never dying."

[psychohist]

Sorry, I hadn't been thinking about the situation with respect to other people who depend on one. An objectively rational choice would probably put 2 last in either case.

Edit: I don't think of it so much as an immortality thing as a "what do I want to do with my life" thing. I don't think immortality by not dying is going to come in time for us, though Margaret has some chance - I think people have a good chance to figure out how to do it around 2060 or so.