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What do these mean? I am not a stranger to Scott Alexander's work, but I have never heard of this before.
With the caveat that I do not follow Aella directly and am getting the gist third-hand, in the course of organizing prostitution-based social activities, she had prospective attendees fill out one of her sexuality questionnaires, with one of the questions being whether the attendees would prefer intimate relations with a live cow or a dead one.
Lol, I guess it really would be that simple. It sounds so autistic "it is an interesting hypothetical question" without even considering people would find it inappropriate.
Straining to find a good reason for that: it works to filter out normies. If you balk at that, then that's your clue you are in the wrong place.
--George Orwell, 1984
I would guess that the cow question is trying to filter against that.
The cow question is similar to "have you stopped beating your wife" in that the literal truthful answer of an innocent person would, by implicature, suggest guilt. It's preposterous to describe someone objecting to that as not grasping analogies, logical errors, etc.
"would you rather" questions are not at all the same as questions that smuggle in unsupported assumptions. The cow question doesn't force you to say you enjoy either dead or living cows, it merely asks you to decide what you prefer-- with the goal of getting you to examine what your moral rules and foundational assumptions about the universe are. Not being able to answer the cow question is a red flag in the same way as not being able answer the trolley question. It's entirely reasonable to distrust people who either refuse to analyze their own system of morality and apply it in self-consistent ways or else refuse to describe and stand by their morals for fear of social sanction.
Distrust me then. I refuse to answer those kinds of gross hypothetical questions. They are not asked in good faith.
What??? Are you so low-decoupling you consider any discussion about an unpleasant topic a personal attack? I am genuinely baffled by your perspective. Do you sincerely think that people who ask the trolley question want to "gotcha!" you? You can trivially disprove this by just asking the question back. Nobody who would ask the wife-beating question would reply to it, but I can guarantee you that virtually anyone who asks the trolley question (or the cow question) is just dying to talk about the philosophy that underpins their own answers. I'm not speaking in the abstract here-- my friend group plays Aella's Askhole game as an icebreaker at parties and the cow question (well, in the askhole formulation it's "would your rather fuck a dog or your own mother") always starts interesting spirited discussions.
Actually, let me administer a quick test about your ability to deal in hypotheticals... "How would you feel right now if you hadn't had breakfast this morning?"
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