Correct me if I’m wrong. But it seems to me that your logic works like this: because two-years-old kids, dogs, and unborn children share the same level of intellectual abilities, we should apply the same rules (regarding killing them) to all of them. There is a missing link in your logic. And that is, intellectual abilities are a sufficient condition for whether or not their lives are at our mercy. It’s like saying that because they share ONE trait, they are equivalent in terms of policy target. I hope down syndrome people are not reading this.
The correlation?
If the mathematical relationship between X and Y is very similar to the mathematical relationship between Z and Y, then what can we say about the causal relationship between X and Z? Please tell me. I have a background in social science and my brain seems to be unable to solve this puzzle.
“An unborn kid is a creature that hasn’t yet passed this big and sharply defined hurdle, so we instinctively discount our sympathy for its reproductive potential by a large factor without knowing why.”
Good point. But in society where young kids (let’s say aged 2-10) are more likely to die due to illness, malnutrition and war, is the discount rate higher? I doubt it.
I think the reason is simple. Really. My theory—borrowed from group psychology—is that people don’t harm anything that looks like themselves. Babies look much more like adults than unborn children do. In the old days, white ppl thought blacks didn’t look like them, so it was okay to enslave the blacks. Suppose that one day, there is a species that is obviously not human (say, internal organs are completely different)… but their external appearance looks exactly like humans, are we able to kill them? I guess not.
Minor complaint: The first half of your comment seems to be a response to this comment by ChronoDas rather than cousin_it’s discussion posting. It took me quite a while to figure this out.
But now that I can see who you were talking to, I agree with much of what you said.
If the mathematical relationship between X and Y is very similar to the mathematical relationship between Z and Y, then what can we say about the causal relationship between X and Z? Please tell me. I have a background in social science and my brain seems to be unable to solve this puzzle.
Correlation does not imply causation, but it’s suggestive in this particular case. Seeing as X and Y are objective variables (reproductive potential and age), and Z is something happening within minds (degree of grief), it’s natural to hypothesize that Z arises from the mind observing X and Y or some correlates of them. Moreover, we can’t help observing Y, and observing (correlates of) X has obvious evolutionary benefit so we’re probably doing that anyway. In light of this, what alternative causal hypotheses do you have for explaining the relationship between X, Y and Z?
Mental development? Intellectual abilities?
Correct me if I’m wrong. But it seems to me that your logic works like this: because two-years-old kids, dogs, and unborn children share the same level of intellectual abilities, we should apply the same rules (regarding killing them) to all of them. There is a missing link in your logic. And that is, intellectual abilities are a sufficient condition for whether or not their lives are at our mercy. It’s like saying that because they share ONE trait, they are equivalent in terms of policy target. I hope down syndrome people are not reading this.
The correlation?
If the mathematical relationship between X and Y is very similar to the mathematical relationship between Z and Y, then what can we say about the causal relationship between X and Z? Please tell me. I have a background in social science and my brain seems to be unable to solve this puzzle.
“An unborn kid is a creature that hasn’t yet passed this big and sharply defined hurdle, so we instinctively discount our sympathy for its reproductive potential by a large factor without knowing why.”
Good point. But in society where young kids (let’s say aged 2-10) are more likely to die due to illness, malnutrition and war, is the discount rate higher? I doubt it.
I think the reason is simple. Really. My theory—borrowed from group psychology—is that people don’t harm anything that looks like themselves. Babies look much more like adults than unborn children do. In the old days, white ppl thought blacks didn’t look like them, so it was okay to enslave the blacks. Suppose that one day, there is a species that is obviously not human (say, internal organs are completely different)… but their external appearance looks exactly like humans, are we able to kill them? I guess not.
Minor complaint: The first half of your comment seems to be a response to this comment by ChronoDas rather than cousin_it’s discussion posting. It took me quite a while to figure this out.
But now that I can see who you were talking to, I agree with much of what you said.
Correlation does not imply causation, but it’s suggestive in this particular case. Seeing as X and Y are objective variables (reproductive potential and age), and Z is something happening within minds (degree of grief), it’s natural to hypothesize that Z arises from the mind observing X and Y or some correlates of them. Moreover, we can’t help observing Y, and observing (correlates of) X has obvious evolutionary benefit so we’re probably doing that anyway. In light of this, what alternative causal hypotheses do you have for explaining the relationship between X, Y and Z?