Lee:
Models are supposed to hew to the facts. Your model diverges from the facts of human moral judgments, and you respond by exhorting us to live up to your model.
Be careful not to confuse “is” and “ought”. Eliezer is not proposing an empirical model of human psychology (“is”); what he is proposing is a normative theory (“ought”), according to which human intuitive judgements may turn out to be wrong.
If what you want is an empirical theory that accurately predicts the judgements people will make, see denis bider’s comment of January 22, 2008 at 06:49 PM.
Eliezer:
I should mention that I’m also an infinite set atheist.
You’ve mentioned this before, and I have always wondered: what does this mean? Does it mean that you don’t believe there are any infinite sets? If so, then you have to believe that a mathematician who claims the contrary (and gives the standard proof) is making a mistake somewhere. What is it?
Frankly, even if you actually are a finitist (which I find hard to imagine), it doesn’t seem relevant to this disucssion: every argument you have presented could equally well have been given by someone who accepts standard mathematics, including the existence of infinite sets.