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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.
And the question about beating your wife doesn't ask if you haven't stopped because you are doing it and wish to continue, it just asks if you haven't stopped. Someone who doesn't beat their wife hasn't stopped beating their wife, after all. It's a perfectly truthful answer to say "no, I haven't stopped beating my wife".
But the person asking the question knows very well that by implicature, saying that you haven't stopped means that you are doing it and are continuing, even if literally speaking, if you don't beat your wife you won't be stopping.
Likewise, although the question about cows doesn't literally mean that you enjoy one of the two options, by implicature it does.
Are you speaking a completely foreign dialect of english than me? I checked merriam webster and none of the definitions for "rather" imply that you must objectively enjoy the subject being discussed-- merely that you must prefer it against an alternative. Yes, the person you're speaking to could then make the argument that if you prefer A to B the only possible reason must be that you like A, but that argument would be obviously fallacious unless they can prove that you like B.
Meanwhile, the overt meaning of "stop" is that you are ending an action that would otherwise continue. Given the context of the conversation, the only continuing action that could possibly be referenced would be "beating your wife." You can't just think up another continuing action in your head to reference and then answer "no" to that instead. That would be a falsehood within the context of the conversation. Imagine a polygamist and domestic abuser on trail for beating his first wife, who when asked that question decides it refers to his second wife and then answers "no." He could construct an imaginary context in which that answer was truthful, but that would not be the context of the conversation.
I can imagine a modified variant of the cow question designed to imply that the person answering must be a pervert... "Which one would you love more, fucking a dead cow or a live one?" for example. But the exact formulation of the question by Aella was, "If you had to have sex with a cow would you rather it be dead or alive? Why?” and that seems like a fair framing to me. Especially since it is explicitly not a yes/no question.
Look, all this should be obvious from first principles simply by changing the incriminating word. If you switch "beating" to "building" or "reanimating" or "electing" on any other valid word that implies an ongoing action that isn't ongoing, the question is just as incomprehensible. That remains true even if the word is positive, like "petting." Meanwhile, the cow question still makes perfect sense with "have sex with" modified to anything else you can do to a cow. "pet," "eat," "build" elect," "beat," etcetera.
It sounds like the reason you think the cow question is a trap is because you're exactly the kind of person who would fallaciously use it as a trap. That says more about you than it does about Aella.
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