All of Raymond D's Comments + Replies
Kind of. From a virtue ethicist standpoint, things that happen aren't really good or bad in and of themselves. It's not bad for a child to drown, and it's not good for a child to be saved, because those aren't the sorts of things that can be good or bad.
It seems very unintuitive if you look at it from a consequentialist standpoint, but it is consistent and coherent, and people who are committed to it find it intuitive.
I guess an equivalent argument from the other side would be something like "Consequentialists think that virtues only matter in terms ...
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It makes sense, but it feels like a very narrow conception of what morality ought to concern itself with.
In your simulation example, I think it depends on whether we can be fully confident that simulated entities cannot suffer, which seems unlikely to me.
I'd quite like to help read some of these. I strongly agree that a table read of the MIRI conversations would be good: given their conversational nature I think a lot of people would find them easier to approach as a recording than as a text log.
Also, my impression is that the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant got a lot out of having a nice video version. If the recordings go well it might be worth considering commissioning an accompanying video for the top prize winner at least.