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You've made an assertion. Not an argument.
If I had two sons, and one son got drunk and punched someone at a bar while another got drunk and was punched by someone at a bar. I would not want to live in a world where the former was killed and the latter killed their assaulter. I'd much rather live in the alternative world where no one died. Which would you rather live in?
Again, I am not a blind utilitarian calculator. It is a model.
This is black-and-white thinking. There are gradations here that you are ignoring, because they are inconvenient to you. Those gradations are central to my argument, so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to respond here.
This argument proves too much. If most people had a son and their son tried to kill someone, they would prefer that the son not be killed in self-defense at all. If you're taking this argument seriously, it doesn't actually matter how high the chance of death from the lethal attack is, killing in self-defense is wrong, period.
Also, you should consider it from behind the veil of ignorance (not the actual version of veil of ignorance, the popular version): If A is lethally attacking B and you don't know whether A or B is your son, would you prefer that B be able to kill A in self-defense even if the lethality isn't too high? I would, and I think most people would.
I agree.
If Man A punched Man B and I knew one of them was my son but not which, I would pray to every god under the sun that B didn't shoot at A.
Why? Remember, we're assuming self-defense. If B shoots A and A is your son, your son is a murderer who was shot in self-defense. If B doesn't shoot A and B is your son, then your son is a murder victim, with some probability. Surely you'd be more concerned for your son's survival if he's innocent than if he's a murderer, so if you don't know whether he's A or B, you'd prefer the scenarion where B shoots.
Unless you're saying that you don't want B to shoot A because your only concern is reducing the chance of death, and it doesn't matter who started it. Then this proves too much and implies that you oppose lethal self-defense, period. Do you?
No? He was a drunkard who punched someone and was killed. Not a murderer.
"with some probability" is don't a lot of work there.
It matters, but not as much as my son stay alive.
It does matter, but not nearly as much imo as it does to you.
If a unhinged man is holding a dozen people hostage with a gun, take him out if you can. I'd support this even if there were a 1-in-13 chance the hostage-taker was my son. If a psychotic man has a knife and is charging you, and you can't get away, shoot him.
If one man sucker punches another in public, don't shoot. I'd support this even if there were a 1-in-2 chance the punched man was my son.
There are scenarios where there are degrees of uncertainty regarding the correct action - parameters that influence this include
who started it
how much effort was made to escape
how much each party escalated prior
discrepancies in overall strength of the parties
presence of peers
distance from security/police
etc
A lethal confrontation is inherently a situation where you have no time to make a considered, reasoned, conclusion about exactly what actions are appropriate in response.
Requiring a balancing test is essentially saying "either no self-defense at all, or take the risk of going to jail". I find it unacceptable to judge people in a sudden lethal confrontation based on factors that no victim could actually take into account when they are thrust into a lethal confrontation.
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I think this is an instance of causal decision theory in the wild, in that you're holding the punch stable when there's no reason to expect that to be the case. What if it being "the sort of world where people who throw punches are killed" means that instead you get to pick between the world where your sons punch and are punched, and the world where nobody is even punched? Then the question would be to what extent punch-kill actually allows acausal flow, right? Ie. we may imagine a world where some people just, out of the blue, are struck by the urge to punch and otherwise-agentically seek out a target to punch. In that case, the kill-branch obviously would only worsen the situation. So the question comes down to if the punch urge is such that the kill branch can successfully shift the incentives enough to suppress the punch branch enough to make up for the QALY loss.
Because at the end of the day, we'd at least somewhat prefer that the least people die. Right?
I agree with all of that. Personally, I think the impact of right-to-shoot on number-of-fist-fights would be very small, because I don't think most fist-fights are based on a rational weighing of pros and cons, which is why I didn't center it in the thought experiment. If you'd prefer, try this one:
You have three sons: Bob, Dan, Frank, and Ivan. They go out to bars and get drunk.
A genie comes up to you and tells you
Bob punched someone.
Dan got punched.
You can choose one of two futures for your wish
Bob got shot. Dan shot his assaulter. Nothing happens to Frank or Ivan.
Bob was not shot. Dan did not shoot his assaulter. Frank also punched someone (not shot) and Ivan was also punched (didn't shoot).
There, now the thought experiment bakes in an assumption that letting-people-shoot reduces fist-fights by 50%. As their parent, which would you wish for? I know what I would.
I think this crucially depends on the death rates from punching vs shoot-to-fist ratio. Also I don't think fistfights are rational, but getting into a situation where a fistfight may ensue is absolutely rational. If you look at for instance duels, IMO a society where getting shot is at risk can develop alternate ways of mediating the sorts of situations that otherwise become fistfights. This is becoming really hard to model - but I don't think that guns are limited to having a 50% reduction on fistfights. If they were, they'd probably be a bad trade on utilitarian grounds alone, though there may still be other cases for them.
Agreed, and based on the evidence this seems like a 2-3 order-of-magnitude difference, which is why I've been arguing its crazy to advocate for shooting. To argue otherwise on utilitarian grounds requires claiming that for every 1% decrease in shooting-people-who-throw-punches, the number of punches throw grows by 100-1000%, which seems patently absurd.
And we can modify the thought experiment: your extended family of ~50 people go to a bar and drink. Would you prefer they all come armed with a willingness to escalate a punch to a shot? I wouldn't. I have a hard time believing many people would.
Once someone actually cares about the people involved, it seem clear that they are much less gung-ho (pun intended).
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