Anders,
Thanks for the really interesting response. Perhaps I should be pitching this idea to leading utilitarians and finding out the groundwork they’ve already laid in this area.
I do think many “moral intuitions” fall neatly with already articulated biases, such as Eww bias.
One thing I’m not sure if you picked up on from my post. I don’t think randomly drafting people into medical experiments to benefit human health/medical knowledge would just help society. I think it helps all of us individuals at risk of being so drafted, provided it’s structured in such a way that our risk of disease and death ends up net lower than if human medical experimentation wasn’t being done in this way.
I’d think economists might look at our humoring of various “moral intuitions”/biases as a sort of luxury spending, or waste. There also might be a cost in terms of human life, health, etc. that could legitimately be described as morally horrific.
It goes to the problem of how people often think shooting and killing 3 people is much worse than fraud, corruption, or waste that wipes out hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth, although objectively that reduction in global wealth might mean a much greater negative impact on human life and health.
Anders, Thanks for the really interesting response. Perhaps I should be pitching this idea to leading utilitarians and finding out the groundwork they’ve already laid in this area.
I do think many “moral intuitions” fall neatly with already articulated biases, such as Eww bias.
One thing I’m not sure if you picked up on from my post. I don’t think randomly drafting people into medical experiments to benefit human health/medical knowledge would just help society. I think it helps all of us individuals at risk of being so drafted, provided it’s structured in such a way that our risk of disease and death ends up net lower than if human medical experimentation wasn’t being done in this way.
I’d think economists might look at our humoring of various “moral intuitions”/biases as a sort of luxury spending, or waste. There also might be a cost in terms of human life, health, etc. that could legitimately be described as morally horrific.
It goes to the problem of how people often think shooting and killing 3 people is much worse than fraud, corruption, or waste that wipes out hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth, although objectively that reduction in global wealth might mean a much greater negative impact on human life and health.