Murder is just a word. … SBF bites all the bullets, all the time, as we see throughout. Murder is bad because look at all the investments and productivity that would be lost, and the distress particular people might feel
You are saying this as if you disagreed with it. In this case, I’d like to vehemently disagree with your disagreeing with Sam.
Murder really is bad because of all the bad things that follow from it, not because there is some moral category of “murder”, which is always bad. This isn’t just “Sam biting all the bullets”, this is basic utilitarianism 101, something that I wouldn’t even call a bullet. The elegance of this argument and arguments like it is the reason people like utilitarianism, myself included.
Believing this has, in my opinion, morally good consequences. It explains why murdering a random person is bad, but very importantly does not explain why murdering a tyrant is bad, or why abortion is bad. Deontology very easily fails those tests, unless you’re including a lot of moral “epicycles”.
I read A Fire Upon the Deep a few years ago, and even back then I found it highly prescient. Now I’ll take this sad event as an opportunity to read his highly acclaimed prequel A Deepness in the Sky. RIP.