Re: Most Explicit Animal Axiom Question Yet
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...whether you think random human beings are close to infinitely more important than any random animal (not a pet).
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Yes, I do.
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1. Someone is choosing between letting one random human die painlessly or letting x random sentient animals (choose whichever is your favorite) die painfully. I have no idea how this situation has arisen so don't worry about it. Is there some number for x that would make you wish he chose the human? If so, what is it?
2. The human is not random but is instead a very bad person. How bad would he have to be for your x to be below 100? How about 1 (in other words one animal is more worth saving)?
3. Same question except while one alternative is to let x animals die painfully, the other alternative is one random human becoming blind in one eye. What's x now? And for x to equal one, how bad a person does he have to be?
PS If the human or animals are saved, assume their life is now normal.
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1. Save the person. Allow x animals to die painfully. I suppose if x were large enough to make a species extinct, that I'd have to consider the loss of a species to the rest of humanity before making a decision. It is possible that allowing one person to die painlessly would be better than the extinction of a species, painfully or otherwise. Any large number of x short of extinction, however, and I'd save the person.
2. Same as 1, above. Save the person. Even a bad person is worth more than the animals. In fact, even if the person were on death row pending execution on Thursday for multiple murder, I'd let the animals die on Wednesday so the person could be executed in accordance with the law on schedule rather than die due to some decision of mine to save x animals the day before.
3. Same as 1 and 2, above. Save the person's eye no matter how big the x as long as x isn't so large that the species would be extinct. Even then, it would depend on the species.
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