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Notes -
Scott says something dumb about ordo amoris
Even knowing what he is talking about and his moral principles behind saying such a thing, he comes off as dumb. I've never agreed with Scott with everything (particularly his polyamorist leanings) but I think that this is the final breaking with SSC and myself. Rationalism is a train that I've ridden for ten years, and now I am finally getting off. Any line of logic that ends with 'the flow of infinite money to foreigners should never stop because of utilitarianism' is stupid and is ultimately a suicidal worldview: or the perspective of a ivory tower bureaucrat who is careless with money that isn't his.
Is Scott implying that if his child were depressed, he wouldn’t spend more time helping his child than a stranger’s child? Or if his own child needed tutoring, he wouldn’t tutor him more than another child? Or is he saying that saving a life is the ultimate criterion of value, thus it dwarfs everything? It’s not actually clear. The example further doesn’t make sense because (1) his scenario implies the child is a community member, falling squarely into the ordo amoris worldview; (2) what we witness first hand compels our moral instinct in ways that data does not, and rather than meaning we have a mismatch between intuition and logic, it means that the pain of not helping the child is more severe and the absence of moral response is more damning when it occurs in front of us — this is part of our design, it’s not a bug. It’s like, if you see a crying puppy in front of you, and you just bought a steak, there’s a big chance you give the crying puppy the steak, because your body is designed to experience distress when not helping someone whose distress you witness. This does not imply that you must now buy steaks and distribute them to hungry puppies worldwide. In fact it doesn’t even imply that you ought to give the puppy the steak if you were somewhere else and someone merely informed you “a 6 month old canine would like your steak”.
He's saying that hypothetically saving a drowning child has no negative impact on his ability to care for his family.
It's an odd choice of example because quite a few people are killed annually trying to rescue children from bodies of water. It's not risk-free.
The original hypothetical from Peter Singer is a child drowning in a shallow pond, where you could just walk over and pull them out. It is designed to be a zero risk situation.
I say the kid (or his parents) owes the rescuer a new suit, which short circuits the whole thing.
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