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Comment by _virtu | Hacker News Reader

The question regarding baby vs old people was really telling. It’s practically the argument for / against abortion. What’s strange to me is that someone would choose to kill five people who are capable of thought instead of an undeveloped human being. But I suppose that’s why we’re seeing the reversal of Roe v Wade being supported. Sigh, fuckin religion.

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You're way, way overthinking it. The world isn't black and white, this is a game, and there's always more choices than just two. I'm pro choice and my choice was to run over the old people.

In virtu's defence, it's difficult to avoid overthinking things in this day and age. We've been conditioned to look for the overlap with our politics in so much that it consumes many of us. Culture wars take heavy psychological tolls on the participants.

I think a common utilitarian way of thinking is years of life left. A baby has a far greater expected value of remaining years and thus is often assigned higher moral value by people. For me it was a no-brainer to kill the old people, although I was imagining them as very old such that they each only had ~5 years left on average.

Mostly agreed. But in another society that values the wisdom of their elders, then they could see that as a large loss. Where-as the baby is replaceable with very little cost to society. I wonder if the stats would be different in an Eastern society.

I suppose it depends on infant mortality rate

I think of it from more of an anti-natalist perspective. The child will have a far greater chance of suffering while the adults will have a chance for less suffering due to their expected lifespan. That’s why I thought about it in the frame of abortion. We’ll typically assign the notion of having a life positive value, but from my perspective that’s just a chance for more suffering.

I chose to read it as "would you kill a teenager, or all of that teenager's caregivers." I felt that sufficiently raised the moral stakes, to make both choices similarly hazardous, while fitting into the parameters written into the scenario.

You can't really boil down trolley problems into "Would you kill x or y?".

Generally someone is already in the way of the trolley, so the question is more like "Would you kill x in order to save y?".

So you could ask people this:

Would you kill a baby to save 5 elderly people?

Would you kill 5 elderly people to save a baby?

How people answer these questions does not really have anything to do with abortion.

> You can't really boil down trolley problems into "Would you kill x or y?".

Thoughts on why you can't? I think you can and must.

It's a big difference that someone is already in the way. If you take no action they die anyway. If you suddenly collapse on the ground or get struck by lightning before you can pull the lever, they still die. It's not your fault that they died.

In that case, it is not really linked to abortion: the baby is already born. A convincing (to me) argument that I heard during COVID debates is that by saving a baby you save, on average, 80 years of potential future life; for elderly people, 5 x 10/15 years.

I think you might have read a little too much of your own politics into that question.

Supporting abortion rights doesn't mean killing babies.

> Supporting abortion rights doesn't mean killing babies.

There is something very revealing about the GP's attitude though. They literally interpret someone wanting to avoid killing a baby as being the exact same thing as opposing abortion. So in their worldview abortion really is all about killing babies.

Eh, not so much. See my other comment to the sibling thread in regards to this discussion.

There are two parts to this discussion that people are pointing out that I could have done a better job explaining.

First that I’m confounding the trolley problem of killing a baby with abortion. I’m well aware it’s a thought experiment that’s used in philosophy. I understand that killing a baby is different than abortion. My main point which wasn’t articulated at all in the first thread was more from an anti-natalist perspective. The society I live in primarily assigns more value to the fetus and or baby than they do the people that already are living.

A lot of the argument comes down to whether or not the child will have a chance to do great things and to experience life. Killing the baby means stopping them from having this opportunity. However I look at it from the perspective of potential suffering and current ability to feel and think. Killing the baby really doesn’t stop the baby from thinking because well, baby. And more importantly killing the baby stops a lifetime of suffering.

Second, my worldview doesn’t contain that mentality. Abortion isn’t about killing babies. To me it’s more about stopping potential life. Whether or not that life has potential that is actually good is the part that I disagree with most of society.

> It’s practically the argument for / against abortion.

1. Abortions usually happen before there's an actual living baby.

2. Abortions don't usually result in sparing the lives of adults.

Do one that says “a child that will have a terrible life” vs “two adults who will have a good life” and let’s see the percents.

They weren’t just 5 people, they were 5 old people. I chose to believe that they were very old and about to die anyway.

I took it as simply 1 full life expectancy vs 5x remaining life expectancy of a senior citizen. Put a few more older people on the tracks and I'd pick the other switch.

Plus the child still has the potential to bring more life into this world, whereas the old people are now infertile (my definition of old being they are too old to procreate).

Those additional lives are hypothetical and in the future, and maximizing the number of humans alive might not be the right thing to do. IMO this is one of the really juicy questions.

Fair point. Given the decreasing birth rate in the western world, I figured we need a few more humans to pay for prior generations retirement. Only half joking…

…I don’t think this is very close to the abortion debate at all.

Not really anything to do with abortion.

Many people are annoyed by Boomer actions every day...

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