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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?"
But I did have breakfast this morning!
"Whatever my case was, I hereby rest it."
Why the link? You must realize that as a low-decoupling idiot, I need more explanation.
And now it's been over 24h hours since I replied to @GBRK and so far, my test results haven't come in. So much for "quick test".
The quick test was to see whether you would interact with me on the object level of the question being asked or on the level of the rhetorical point I was making by asking you the question. Since you did the first, and furthermore ignored all the other points I made, I realized that you had neither the interest nor the capability to discuss in general whether provocative hypothetical questions are useful or interesting. That's essentially isomorphic to getting you to answer the cow question anyway, since it implies your answer wouldn't have any interesting reasoning behind in. Consequently I lost interest in our conversation.
Look, those cute little hypothetical questions being intellectually stimulating thought exercises is a view one can take. I certainly thought so when I was an autistic teenager. But from there, we go down the path of retardation.
First off, making the cute little hypothetical question maximally gross is not some neutral and obejctive way of detecting low-decoupling sheeple. It might do that job in select cases, but to most people inserting some intentionally disgusting scenario into the conversation is an act of social aggression - forcing them to consider, imagine and spend attention on ideas that they'd spend significant energy avoiding in real life. The trolley problem is bad enough - a scenario contrived to make people weigh the value of human lives, which is something that most have been conditioned against considering. But it's also a clean scenario; a numbers game; clearly an invitation to considerations of ethics and of life-or-death decisions. I'm not a fan, I consider it pretty much entirely pointless, but sometimes lives really do need to be weighed - such as in the debate of whether hijacked civilian planes should be shot down.
The cowfucker problem is not that. The cowfucker problem exists to gross people out. It's perhaps a social ritual in which all those involved shed some degree of common decency, at least hypothetically, wink wink, in order to buy into the enlightened society of the intellectually superior; those who are willing to dedicate some portion of their minds and some small part of their lives to the idea of fucking cows. And let me be straight here - I call utter bullshit on the idea that there are any great insights to be gained from pondering cowfucking. It's a stupid little game, not some great and valuable test of intellectual capacity. I'd even go as far as to assume that its main purpose is to flaunt one's pretend superiority by ignoring social norms, some contrarian pride in communaly sticking their imaginary dicks into imaginary cows, but I can't read your mind so just dismiss that as uncharitable cynicism on my part.
If cowfucking-pondering is the standard by which you judge others, then please consider yourself judged in turn.
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