73 KiB
[D][BST] What would be worth killing a baby for?
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Author: u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2ivpjj/dbst_what_would_be_worth_killing_a_baby_for/
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Score: 25
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Created: 2014-10-10T18:56:25
Post:
Let's say that there's a very specific type of magic that requires the sacrifice of a healthy baby of at least six pounds. This magic has been extensively studied, and its limits have been mapped out by an evil empire whose scientific methods were strong but whose infrastructure and ability to withstand invasions was not. We know that the baby-killing magic works. We know how it works. We know that it can't be short-circuited in all of the obvious (or even non-obvious) ways that you might immediately think about trying.
If you kill a baby with this ritual, X happens.
- What is the lower bound at which you think this cost would be acceptable?
And if you think there is no lower bound, I'd like to know that too.
(This is for a story.)
Comments:
u/DaystarEld [+19] Pokémon Professor (42 minutes later)
Preventing loss of life is pretty much the major metric I'd judge its worth by.
There is a short story called "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" where it's heavily implied that one child being neglected and mistreated its whole life leads to a perfect utopia for everyone else. Everyone at some point in their life is shown the child and made to understand its suffering once, and then can ignore it/live with the knowledge. Some tiny minority of people end up leaving, unable to bear living there anymore knowing what the cost is.
I have mixed feelings about Omelas. I think the mistreatment and neglect of the child is hard to stomach for the intended purpose of "make everything perfect" since the lack of suffering/death isn't really singled out: most forms of utopia I imagine though has mostly conquered these things. At the same time, our society is far less perfect than Omelas, has far more horrible fates done to far more people in it, and most people are pretty okay with the status quo.
Compared to both these things, sacrificing the life of a newborn infant to improve society isn't so strange. If I cared that much about keeping babies alive, I would give most of my money to natal care facilities in third world countries.
So if the baby's sacrifice is done to achieve a true utopia, I have to admit that that's acceptable to me. If it requires multiple babies, even. How many is a good question that I have no ready answer for: for now all I can say is my System 1 is uneasy with more than one per year.
But if the spell does something more practical/realistic like save the country from imminent slaughter/destruction, that too is acceptable, since the loss of life is clearly weighted. Let's say you could sacrifice a baby to power a weapon that would help you win a single battle. In such a case, using it for self-defense is perfectly acceptable, since much more life would be lost, and much more suffering spread, by being slaughtered... including the child's own anyway.
Much farther down the totem pole, individual improvements are harder to accept. Sacrificing a baby to restore someone's health and youth, for example, is rather ghoulish, and has the potential to be seriously abused even if intended to be done with good intentions. Again, I can't come up with an exact number at the moment, but my System 1 is most uncomfortable with less than 10 lives saved for one baby, and less uncomfortable with every factor of ten increased after that. A baby for a hundred lives seems necessary, to me.
In addition, selection is something that should be addressed as well. To make it the most acceptable, no one should have their children taken from them against their will. There should be a pool of well compensated women who are okay with basically providing a steady supply of babies for possible use. These children would be well treated and raised communally until they pass the age where it's no longer possible to use them for the spell, and then given to foster programs. Youngest babies would be prioritized if one needed to be picked at any given time.
Looking forward to seeing the story that spawned this :)
u/alexanderwales [+12] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
Looking forward to seeing the story that spawned this :)
The story opens with two dark wizards about to sacrifice a baby in a dark ritual. They end up raising him as their own instead, because they can't bring themselves to do it. The boy is then the protagonist of the story.
I've been toying with when he'll learn about the ritual he was destined for, and what the ultimate goal of it would have been. His parents are meant to be morally ambiguous but mostly sympathetic, which means that there needs to be a fairly sound logic to their decision-making - something that you could argue might actually be "right", or at least something that sympathetic characters could have agreed was "right" before being presented with the reality of actually having blood on their hands.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (7 hours later)
If they don't end up doing the ritual, they must suffer somehow as a result, no? Also, is he their child?
Without knowing more about the story it's hard to throw out specifics, but what if it was to cleanse themselves of some curse or illness? The problem obviously is that they'll still be suffering for it if they don't do a sacrifice, but it's a kind of selfish-yet-understandable sort of goal.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (8 hours later)
He's not their child, they stole him from an orphanage.
A lot of these comments are about the prevention of some bad thing happening, but right now I'm thinking that the ritual was intended for some positive measure - some enhancement of some kind. Perhaps the ritual would prevent their deaths by anything short of decapitation, and they reasoned that the life of an infant was worth less than potentially centuries of continued youth.
The big thing I'm worried about is that the boon they hoped to gain can't be too good, because otherwise the reader will be left scratching their head about why everyone doesn't try to kill babies all the time. But it also can't be too bad, because otherwise the dark wizards become irredeemable for having decided to kill a baby for such a small benefit. I don't know - it's not hugely important to the plot, but it is something I'd like to decide on.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (8 hours later)
So the ritual is widely known among society? Yeah, that makes the immortality boon way too powerful. The reason people are intent on preventing bad things rather than granting boons is that justifying murder tends to require preventing greater suffering: selfish murder is pretty immoral by most standards. That said, they ultimately don't go through with it, so that certainly helps.
Assuming they're a couple, what if she's barren and it would allow her to conceive their own child?
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (9 hours later)
Oh, they're both men. So that won't work.
The plan is for dark magic to (for the most part) have a lot of things that are moral but also icky - it's shunned because it's equivalent to a socially unacceptable answer to the trolley problem, or the utilitarian transplant surgeon. Killing one person to save two others makes sense, and it also makes sense that a kingdom which considers itself "good" would not do it. And the story is sort of about the difference between good and evil, especially when considering the corner cases of morality.
So I guess what I'm shooting for is morally defensible, mildly selfish, and somewhat unpleasant to System 1.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (9 hours later)
Makes sense, I just think you're going to have trouble finding equivalents to the trolley problem in terms of icky-but-justifiable that don't involve preventing harm. Anything that's a "boon" is just too self-serving to justify murder, I think.
But not everyone would agree with me. After all, there are plenty who think harming others for profit is justifiable. What if it's for an alchemist ingredient that's in high demand on the black market? "Crystallized Empty Soul Shard" or some such. The "if we don't do it someone else will" rationalization would apply.
u/awesomeideas [+1] Dai stiho, cousin. (10 hours later)
Perhaps they're in chronic pain which can be permanently relieved by killing the baby. Maybe the ritual will also heal anyone within a certain radius.
u/Pluvialis [+1] Second Age Sauron (a day later)
Maybe either the baby needs to be stolen for the ritual to work, otherwise it would just be a case of "yeah I'll go through 9 months of pregnancy in order to gain X benefit by killing the baby".
u/TimTravel [+3] (an hour later)
It was pretty explicitly stated, it just wasn't explained why that was the case. It's short, well-written, and I highly recommend it. It can be found online if you look in the right places (google).
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (an hour later)
Yeah, that's what I mean: we know the child is suffering, but we don't know WHY. It's just implied that it's "necessary," or at least, that the reader must think it's necessary to accept the whole idea of the utopia's existence. It's a very uniquely written story, and definitely recommended to anyone that hasn't read it
u/trifith [+5] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (an hour later)
A baby, already born, is a human life, though perhaps not a sentient one. It has a functional brain, so qualifies for my definition of person-hood. This means killing it is reserved for lifeboat type situations (in my morality).
So it would need to be a situation where killing the baby would prevent a clear, assured, immediate danger to at least 2 other people that cannot be prevented in any other way. The danger and necessity would need to be as certain as the success of the ritual.
This is the very very lowest bound. The level of certainty I'd need to actually perform the ritual is unlikely to exist in real life though.
u/Pluvialis [+4] Second Age Sauron (3 hours later)
What makes a baby a person, in any meaningful sense?
u/trifith [+0] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (5 hours later)
I define a person as any member of a species generally recognized as sentient with a functioning brain, and any individual member of any species that demonstrates sentience.
Since an infant is a member of a species generally recognized as sentient (human) and has a functioning brain (at least a partially developed cerebral cortex) it counts as a person.
It's not a perfect definition, but it's good enough for most purposes.
u/Pluvialis [+4] Second Age Sauron (5 hours later)
What counts as a member of a species? What if the baby wasn't conceived and born naturally? What if it was constructed molecule-for-molecule by some advanced technology? What if it didn't have a body but was just a brain? Or a simulated intelligence of the same level? What if it wasn't human on any level, but was just a constructed or simulated intelligence with the same capabilities as a human baby brain?
It's not hard, if you try, to think of ways to make something with the equivalent intelligence of a baby that isn't 'a member of a species'.
Also, importantly, what does it mean to you to consider something a 'person'? Are you just using it sort of academically, or does it have ethical significance?
u/trifith [+1] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (5 hours later)
What counts as a member of a species?
Capable, or reasonably expected to be capable, at a healthy maturity, of producing fertile offspring.
What if the baby wasn't conceived and born naturally? What if it was constructed molecule-for-molecule by some advanced technology?
If it meets the above qualification, or is reasonably expected to, it is a member of the species.
What if it didn't have a body but was just a brain? Or a simulated intelligence of the same level? What if it wasn't human on any level, but was just a constructed or simulated intelligence with the same capabilities as a human baby brain? It's not hard, if you try, to think of ways to make something with the equivalent intelligence of a baby that isn't 'a member of a species'.
If it was any of these things, it could qualify under the second definition of any individual member of any species. If such a thing became commonplace, and generally qualified as individuals, then all members of the species would be presumed to qualify.
Also, importantly, what does it mean to you to consider something a 'person'? Are you just using it sort of academically, or does it have ethical significance?
A person is a life with ethical significance. A cow is not ethically significant (unless it demonstrates sentience). A human is. Koko the gorilla probably is. A wild gorilla is more likely to be than a cow, but uncertain
Having ethical significance means it is generally immoral, outside of lifeboat situations, to act violently against the body or property of the being in question.
A lifeboat situation is a catchall term for a situation where an otherwise immoral act must be performed to prevent a greater immoral event from occurring, such as prioritizing passengers on a lifeboat when there is insufficient room for all, or the trolley problem where one must redirect a trolley to kill one person in order to save 5 others.
Sorry if anything is confusing, I'm not in the general habit of pinning my words down quite this exactly.
u/Pluvialis [+3] Second Age Sauron (5 hours later)
Capable, or reasonably expected to be capable, at a healthy maturity, of producing fertile offspring.
So a baby with a genetic condition rendering it infertile isn't a person?
it could qualify under the second definition of any individual member
Okay, what if you made an 'artificial' baby, with all the same mental capabilities of a natural human baby, but which would never grow up or mature. Is that a person? But one which can mature is? Despite their being presently identical in mental capacity?
Doesn't that seem odd?
Seems we agree on the ethical significance of personhood.
u/trifith [+3] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (6 hours later)
So a baby with a genetic condition rendering it infertile isn't a person?
The keyword in this case is healthy. Having a genetic disorder is not healthy. If the disorder did not exist, or could be cured through gene therapy, fertile offspring is possible. It's a person.
Okay, what if you made an 'artificial' baby, with all the same mental capabilities of a natural human baby, but which would never grow up or mature. Is that a person? But one which can mature is? Despite their being presently identical in mental capacity?
The first answer is I don't know. I am unfamiliar with the cognitive abilities of the average human infant.
I do know that sentience is most probably a function of the cerebral cortex, and that the cerebral cortex begins to have electrical activity approximately 21 weeks after conception, and finishes development approximately 25 years after birth. A human baby is somewhere on the scale between a non-sentient fetus at 20 weeks, and a sentient adult at 25 years. A human toddler is, by my estimate based only on personal interaction, significantly closer to the 25 year old than the infant is to the toddler, in terms of demonstrated sentience. Which indicates to me that the scale between the sentience level of a fetus and the sentience level of a toddler is a very steep curve, that later levels off, and slowly matures over the remaining development cycle.
Assuming the curve to be sufficiently steep, an artificial infant that cannot increase its sentience level, but can learn behavior, could be sentient, and demonstrate that sentience, thus qualifying as a person with ethical weight.
If the curve is not as steep, the artificial baby is non-sentient, and ethically irrelevant. I would, however, assume it to be sentient until such time as I had a better understanding of the mind we are dealing with, and grant it the ethical weight of person hood.
If the artificial baby, and the cognitively identical natural baby, are both non-sentient, the natural baby loses some level of ethical weight, but because it is probable that it will eventually qualify for person hood, it has more weight than the artificial baby.
Edit: words
u/Pluvialis [+1] Second Age Sauron (21 hours later)
That was really well written.
Mainly you're just not confident about the cognitive abilities of a baby, and you are right to focus on the change from a fetus to an adult. Our only disagreement in that regard then would be that I pretty firmly don't think a baby qualifies for personhood.
u/trifith [+1] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (2 days later)
Our only disagreement in that regard then would be that I pretty firmly don't think a baby qualifies for personhood.
Well, it's very hard to determine the mental abilities of a being that is both non-verbal due to lack of knowledge of words, and undergoing continuous mental development. Better to err on the side of not destroying sentient beings in my opinion.
u/Pluvialis [+1] Second Age Sauron (3 days later)
Well, I suppose that's a fair enough objection. Although you have to be careful, since rocks are also non-verbal and we generally assume they're not people. But obviously babies are definitely somewhere on the path to becoming people.
I don't think you need to be able to speak to 'demonstrate' that you're a person, though. I think it's safe to say that, for babies, the world is so confusing (they don't know how to deliberately use their bodies to accomplish anything or how anything works in physics) that at best they're living in a perpetual state of "just what the fuck is going on here I can't understand a bit of it" and therefore have never managed to form aspirations or think about the future yet, which is what I think makes it immoral to kill a person - robbing them of their planned futures.
u/tvcgrid [+1] (a day later)
There's a lot of assumptions wrapped up in this bundle of characters called 'sentience'. What is sentience?
Also, does a thing that is infertile but otherwise resilient to deterioration while existing in moderate conditions environmentally and provided with the appropriate amount of energy to continue preserving itself outside of equilibrium...is that thing a person? Why the requirement of 'fertility'? Why the biological requirement?
Does something that fits your mental category of 'sentient' but exists as an artificially constructed system, be it physical (not naturally evolved) or even in software, does that constitute a person? If not, why not?
What about mentally handicapped individuals that are genetically homo sapien and are not fertile. They don't show behavior that fits your mental category of 'sentient'. Are they persons? If they are, you're using some conditions as a special case it seems; what are those additional conditions, if any?
u/trifith [+1] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (2 days later)
There's a lot of assumptions wrapped up in this bundle of characters called 'sentience'. What is sentience?
Great question. I can only give examples, not definitions of the term. I don't claim to understand minds well enough to give an exact definition. I can say "that human is sentient" and "That cow is not" and "That gorilla might be" though.
Also, does a thing that is infertile but otherwise resilient to deterioration while existing in moderate conditions environmentally and provided with the appropriate amount of energy to continue preserving itself outside of equilibrium...is that thing a person? Why the requirement of 'fertility'? Why the biological requirement?
We were discussing biological beings. Species may not be the best word to use in the definition. It was not intended to be completely exact.
Does something that fits your mental category of 'sentient' but exists as an artificially constructed system, be it physical (not naturally evolved) or even in software, does that constitute a person? If not, why not?
Yes.
What about mentally handicapped individuals that are genetically homo sapien and are not fertile. They don't show behavior that fits your mental category of 'sentient'. Are they persons? If they are, you're using some conditions as a special case it seems; what are those additional conditions, if any
Part one of my definition specifies members of a species generally recognized as sentient. This would include all members of homo sapien, regardless of actual mental ability, provided there is some electrical activity in the cerebral cortex.
u/narfanator [+1] (5 hours later)
If my pen is made of exotic materials, is it still a pen?
Any definition supplied is going to be an approximation; the question is then: do you err on the side of inclusion or exclusion?
Genetically, a member of a species can be exclusively recursively approximated as "an organism capable of creating another organism of the same species". This, of course, excludes sterile individuals and prevents "mules" from being a species, which may be "accurate" - hence the "exclusive" part of the approximation.
You could also suggest a sort-of memetic recursive definition: "an organism capable of propagating ideas to and from other members of its species", although that probably only differentiates between degrees/categories of sentience (including "non")
What I'm getting at is that I don't think "when does it become not a baby" is an important question given the context of the OP.
u/Pluvialis [+1] Second Age Sauron (6 hours later)
Any definition supplied is going to be an approximation; the question is then: do you err on the side of inclusion or exclusion?
Not every case is borderline.
I don't think "when does it become not a baby" is an important question given the context of the OP.
I'm trying to ascertain what trifith thinks represents 'personhood', with its ethical significance. Trifith says a baby is a person, I think they are not. Probing for the transition between baby and not-baby will either provide me with that information or persuade trifith to agree with me.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (21 hours later)
Not every case is borderline.
Thing is, this whole thread was created to find a border. So we are trying to find the least valuable type of 6+ pound human baby and then determine how much one such unit is worth when calculated in magical alterations of reality of any one kind. With emphasis on the fact that we are looking for the lower bounds.
u/Pluvialis [+1] Second Age Sauron (21 hours later)
You're right about the thread at large, but the discussion I was specifically engaged in was just about whether a baby is a person or not. For me, it definitely isn't, it's not borderline so no call for 'erring'.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (21 hours later)
Its just mostly that not a single person answered in that way. But then again I may be kind of a hypocrite here as I to have no clue regarding the lower bounds.
u/Pluvialis [+1] Second Age Sauron (21 hours later)
I'm really sorry, I just can't figure out what you mean!
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (22 hours later)
I mean that OP asked for lower bounds. But not a single person has tried to approximate that in the slightest. Instead everyone seems to be vaguely talking about lives saved in tradeoff or discussing the intrinsic value of babies or the implications of utilitarian surgeons on society and variations thereof.
But then again, I can't think of anything much better either.
u/Pluvialis [+1] Second Age Sauron (22 hours later)
Oh right! I get you.
Well then, as I said in my own top-level comment, for me it's simply about how much I want to either keep or 'use' (like to give to someone who wants one) a baby versus the outcome of the spell. If the spell cleaned my room for me I'd probably sacrifice that convenience for the sake of giving the baby to someone who wanted it more than I wanted a clean room.
I think OP was asking about how much we'd need to be bribed with to be willing to do something that is on some level immoral. My response is that I don't think it's at all immoral. So maybe 'no lower bound' is where I stand.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (23 hours later)
Oh. I was thinking what was requested was a limit that is morally ambiguous enough that most would be abhorred while some that put thought into it actually judged the ritual good. But maybe I misunderstood.
In the case it is as you say though it becomes even more subjective in my opinion. Because I for instance would be willing to sacrifice huge amounts of lives, innocent or no, to safe the lives of immediate family and friends. In that case my lower bounds for one baby, freely and secretly given by its mother for an amount of money I can pay would be the complete immunity to mental diseases for a random member of my immediate family, given that I know who it affected after the completion of the ritual.
EDIT: With enough persuasion and with extra assurances of secrecy and ability to avoid both legal and social repercussions I may even be persuaded to lower my bounds. Not easily though.
u/Pluvialis [+1] Second Age Sauron (23 hours later)
I for instance would be willing to sacrifice huge amounts of lives, innocent or no, to safe the lives of immediate family and friends
Oookay. Maybe I would do so, but I would feel guilty about it... Do you think that's moral?
my lower bounds for one baby, freely and secretly given by its mother for an amount of money I can pay would be the complete immunity to mental diseases for a random member of my immediate family
Might "an amount of money I can pay" not be the key factor here? Like if it was only 10p, would you sacrifice the baby to just cure a family member's current mental illness?
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (23 hours later)
Do you think that's moral?
No. But you were talking about bribery. Accepting bribes isn't moral. Except if you use whatever you were bribed with to help society by an amount greater than the damage done just through facilitating corruption. But yes, under specific circumstances I am bribable.
Might "an amount of money I can pay" not be the key factor here?
Not in this case. As of yet (I'm not very rich) I value money less than not having to carry the psychological burden of being directly responsible for the death of a specific human. I am assuming here that I have to procure the baby to be sacrificed and that the ritual doesn't work like this.
would you sacrifice the baby to just cure a family member's current mental illness?
Several issues. 1.) Not all mental illnesses are worth a baby. 2.) The risk of the severe guilt/anger/despair produced by curing a mental illness through baby sacrifice just to have the same person suffer from some other mental illness that may be even worse just a few years down the line (small as the chance may be) seems to great for me 2.) I have no family members with mental illnesses. Seeing them succumb to a bad enough mental illness may change my stance on point 2.
But maybe if I could tap some steady, cheap and risk-free supply of babies it would be different. After all, immunizing my whole family would cost 4+ babies while your alternative only costs at a case by case basis, which would start at 0 and probably not rise too high.
...My thought patterns are becoming macabre
u/Nepene [+5] (a day later)
Based on my current behavior, probably a really well made set of jeans, like those made by child labour. Or an iphone maybe.
u/CaptainCrayfish [+11] (58 minutes later)
How about using them to feed the Irish? Sounds like a modest proposal to me.
u/None [+3] (an hour later)
This. This is an idea I could get behind.
u/gabbalis [+7] (19 minutes later)
Hmm.
Well. Lets say we assume babies have 0 value as sapient beings. They would still have the value of being 9 months of work to produce. Maybe a bit less if we learn to mass produce them in the future.
Point is, sacrificing them for truly trivial things is definitely out. If it takes less than nine months of work by one person you probably don't want to waste a perfectly good baby on it.
Now realistically, I'm not exactly sure what I would put as the intrinsic value of a six pound baby, but it almost assuredly isn't zero.
I'd say its probably lower than the value of a more developed mind, so sacrificing them for immortality might be acceptable. How much utility a human life is worth in the first place is a somewhat open question, but we've already managed to get some economic estimates of it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life.
But there's another layer, Some societies just can't handle sacrificing babies. Our current society would certainly be outraged at almost any baby sacrifice, so even if it was one baby a week for the immortality of the rest of humanity, (definitely worth while) I think we'd still have to ease it into the culture.
u/TimTravel [+5] (an hour later)
Point is, sacrificing them for truly trivial things is definitely out. If it takes less than nine months of work by one person you probably don't want to waste a perfectly good baby on it.
Maybe if you amortize it out? Save a million people five minutes of work?
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (an hour later)
Meh. I'd consider 5 minutes of work a rounding error. Unless I'm on the way to the hospital or something, five minutes is rarely enough time to do anything so important that I would care about recouping or losing it.
u/TimTravel [+2] (2 hours later)
A brief moment of joy should be considered nonzero, at least. There are ways of making it work for most utility-distribution functions.
edit: if it's a million people then we would expect some of them to get saved five important minutes...maybe.
u/Terkala [+3] (29 minutes later)
With your last example. I think if it is anything that can be classified as a "common good" where not everyone needs to be aware of the baby-sacrificing magic, then it would likely be implemented by the nobility in secret.
There would also be the "other person's baby" argument. You would value your own offsrping much more highly than someone else's.
u/Timewinders [+2] (an hour later)
This exact situation comes up in a Harry Potter fanfic I've read, where the nobility sacrifices a child every seven years to make the country more secure. Every character who learns about it considers it to be evil, including the main antagonist. Keeping it a secret made it more evil than it needed to be since a consenting volunteer couldn't be used. Instead it was done by lottery.
u/Kishoto [+1] (a day later)
Can you provide a link for this fanfic? It sounds interesting.
u/Timewinders [+1] (a day later)
I wasn't sure whether to mention it by name since it's a pretty major spoiler and you wouldn't know which fic the spoiler is for until I wrote it, but the fic is
u/RMcD94 [+2] (an hour later)
If it takes less than nine months of work by one person you probably don't want to waste a perfectly good baby on it.
I mean at some point we're going to be refining production of babies for this ritual, either artificial wombs, inciting twins or octoplets etc.
Obviously there's a point where the value of the material and energy going into producing the child is less than the value of the ritual, but up til then there are efficiencies to be made.
u/E-o_o-3 [+8] (2 hours later)
TWO babies!
u/E-o_o-3 [+6] (2 hours later)
More seriously, there are two pretty much separate questions embedded here - "what would be worth purposefully killing a person for" (I think I'm a utilitarian consequentialist here) and "what are babies worth, morally?" (for which my bounds are "neither less than a half, nor more than double of a 50 year old human, and definitely less than a 1-14 year old human - I intuitively feel plotting "intrinsic moral weight" with "age" gives a curve which peaks somewhere in early childhood, assuming life spans of 80-120. )
I encourage thinking about how your answer would practically translate to the real world which does not have morally inconvenient magical spells; I'm immediately reminded of the Utilitarian Transplant Surgeon.
u/narfanator [+3] (5 hours later)
A thing I find relevant and interesting is that I've read about certain cultures (some/all of which are fictional... :P) in which infants weren't given a name - or considered truly a person - until their first birthday, since infants under a year died often, but infants over a year died rarely.
u/Newfur [+2] Crazy like a fox. Literally. (10 hours later)
The same is true in many other cultures of babies below 3 months/one season/100 days, and I would generally agree. Babies just plain aren't sapient before 1 total year of life, and anyone who's been around babies that young would know that.
u/None [+3] (10 hours later)
Hmm. Having read your comments about how the ritual is used, I'm having trouble coming up with something that would both be uncommon and morally defensible to most people. If 1% of people are willing to do it, all the babies will die (or society will get restructured around protecting babies) unless there is some limiting factor. Also will this be the only magic ritual possible, or are there others? That might affect it too.
u/Charlie___ [+3] (5 hours later)
I think there is an additional problem with the societal impacts of unethical sourcing of babies. I don't want to live in the kind of society where people will be trying to steal babies to get X - in order to be okay, X must outweigh the problems it brings to society.
If baby-murder that involves additional crimes (child abuse, kidnapping, breach of contract) can be controlled somehow (ethically sourced babies only) then X doesn't have to be too big - saving the lives of two babies, or sufficiently large amounts of natural resources (say, enough so that society can afford to train an extra doctor) or something.
But probably, dark magic will have a negative impact on broader society, and that raises the standards on X a lot. I'd prefer a factor of five at least, possibly more.
To put a different spin on this, imagine two babies were dying and you were babysitting someone else's baby. By refraining from doing the ritual, you perform a different sort of ritual - you sacrifice a baby so that a society can exist where people can hire babysitters.
u/drageuth2 [+2] (3 hours later)
Lowest bound? Saving the lives of two babies who otherwise would die. Preferably more.
I might accept saving the life of one person old enough to reach sentience, since a baby isn't there yet and therefore less valuable.
Of course, that's presuming I can act as a complete utilitarian, and not get caught up in the squishy human feelings of it all. Realistically, I ain't gonna be killin' any babies. Not for anything less than preventing something on the order of thousands of deaths or more, anyway.
That bound is lowered significantly if I can mass-produce guaranteed not-ever-gonna-be-sentient babies with cloning technology and still have it work. Then the reward just has to be greater than the money required to make one clone. That kinda system I might actually be able to get in on in real life, too. It's basically just creepier stem cell harvesting.
u/Traiden04 [+2] (a day later)
Another late to the party suggestion. The Ritual should be used to open a two way portal to a location and keep it open for some period of time. It would be more a question of what could be done with logistics type of effect rather than a direct life extending or saving effect.
u/TimTravel [+3] (an hour later)
Munchkining ethics: if Simurgh hands you series of babies that genuinely will cause massive global harm if you don't kill them then you can ethically kill each one as they come. You'd also be ethically obligated to make her stop but still.
At some point you'd think some sort of minimally unethical baby facsimile would be sufficient, but if it has to be similar enough then the ethical cost would be nearly as bad.
u/PeridexisErrant [+6] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (5 hours later)
Simurgh hands you series of babies that genuinely will cause massive global harm if you don't kill them then you can ethically kill each one as they come.
She wants you to get comfortable with killing, and it worked. You now have a much harder time refusing to kill based on ethical arguments.
u/Pluvialis [+2] Second Age Sauron (3 hours later)
Personally, I'd say the only moral consideration of any significance here is the question of whose baby it is and what they think. I consider a baby as property, something that has been worked for and would take time, effort and resources to replace, and may well have become sentimentally important to someone and become irreplaceable as far as they're concerned.
That is, assuming the baby's demise doesn't include discomfort. Torturing babies is a different matter.
But grieving parents and torture aside, the practical consideration would simply be whether the expected utility of the spell's outcome is higher for you than having a baby.
u/None [+1] (an hour later)
Hart's Hope, anybody?
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (22 hours later)
Late to the party, but how about this:
The Ritual of 6 Pounds (as it will hence be called) is what gives supernatural magical powers to a single human. Or better yet, a wieldable artifact. The powers are limited (think of it as a battery requiring 1 baby to be charged) and can be used for many small things or a few medium things or one larger thing. No spell fueled by one baby can directly save more than one life though. At least not in the straight forward sense of curing several diseases and such. This will immediately make sure that even non-stupid people would find the practice reprehensible.
What it can do though is things like increasing the quality of life for a lot of people in minor but noticeable ways. Or be used as a powerful weapon, thus saving lives in terms of self defense and such. Or it could also be useful in a logistical sense. Maybe granting flight to large objects or creating things akin to Portable Holes.
Best would be that it has a variety of uses so that the first reaction would be that someone is sacrificing babies just to personally wield an item of mediocre power, while utilitarians who think about it can clearly see that several lives could be made better or even saved (transporting food/winning wars) for the cost of merely one semi-sentient entity with "potential" to become something greater but no actual experience lost.
Another way to go is that the enhancement is percentage based with large amounts of net gain that are not immediately visible. An example would be 20% increased physical strength, reflexes, resistance to disease, and slower aging for a 100 people.
EDIT: Now that I think of it, this may not work at all if you don't want society to crumble. I guess the effect must be something that does not increase lineally the more babies you sacrifice. Neither in regards to the benefits for one person nor the amount of people benefited. Pretty much what /u/bkkgirl said:
Hmm. Having read your comments about how the ritual is used, I'm having trouble coming up with something that would both be uncommon and morally defensible to most people. If 1% of people are willing to do it, all the babies will die (or society will get restructured around protecting babies) unless there is some limiting factor. Also will this be the only magic ritual possible, or are there others? That might affect it too.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (4 days later)
Late to the party, but it looks like you didn't really get what you were looking for, so I'll give it a shot.
- Creating food/fertilizing crops to feed a bunch of people - during a famine, or if there are poor people starving. Open an eeevil soup kitchen, basically.
- Warding a village against mundane disease. Just bam, no more disease for this village. (Wouldn't work narratively if there's a plague on, because then everyone would die when the ritual fails.)
- Becoming smart/powerful enough to catch [& defeat], say, a werewolf, or a serial killer. Something that will kill, say, a minimum of five people and a maximum of thirty.
- Preventing miscarriage, death in childbirth and infant mortality (within reason) over, say, a small town. (This has a nice equivalent-exchange ring to it.)
- Helping to postpone something that will eventually destroy the world in the absence of babies. A world-killing archdemon that will wake in [100+10*babies] years or something.
It's surprisingly tricky to make the Dark choice clearly right - because the sympathetic good guys want to use it - and unpalatable enough that Good People will revile it, including the (non-evil) legislature. I think these have about the right balance, though.
u/Ulmaxes [+1] (6 days later)
It would have affect a significant percentage of the population and relieve an immense burden from society as a whole, i.e. wiping out AIDS completely and instantly. That's greatly benefiting something in the ballpark of 35 million people for today's Earth. Although we've got a better handle on it now than we did thirty years ago, that's still saving a lot of lives now plus all the potential lives of the children of those people and anyone they would have gone on to infect. That's roughly .5% of the current population plus potentials affected, and many of them saved from death. Depending on a world's total population...I'm not sure how I'd make that percentage scale, but just based on right now, I seem to be ok with it as is.
u/embrodski [+1] (2 hours later)
How intimate is the killing? Do I have to look at the baby, hear it, and kill it myself with a knife? Or is this something I can do at a distance, with no pain or fear involved for the baby? Better yet, can I simply tell someone else to kill the baby in a painless way and not personally be involved at all?
If I can order an underling to take an unwanted baby that's been disavowed by its parents, give it to some other underling, and make the entire process as detached and trauma-free as possible, it significantly lowers the lower bound.
In general, it would have to be something that could not be produced via 9 months of labor by a healthy human. This is inefficient and leads to using up our surplus baby reserves in a stupid way. We don't want to become reliant on baby-killing to feed a hundred people if we could have farmed/hunted/gathered instead; otherwise post-peak-baby we're gonna have a serious problem. Exceptions could be made for high-priority items that are needed immediately and cannot be achieved in other ways.
Also to consider - what are the social consequences of killing a baby? If I'm an average american killing his neighbor's baby I'm likely going to be abandoned by everyone I know, hated by all of society aftewards, and may face serious legal repercussions. If I'm the president and the baby is in a Middle Eastern country, I don't have to worry much at all. Maybe a few vocal websites will write some angry words before everyone moves on.
u/TildeAleph [+1] (8 hours later)
Saving two babies
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [-2] Utopian Smut Peddler (an hour later)
I recognize a stock anti-Objectivism trap when I see one. Well reformatted for this rationalist audience, of course.
The answer for a value calculation must include effectively your own death, you see, because most people's sense of identity would not survive such an act. So it is also an act of self-sacrifice nearly the same as if you were killing yourself as well in whatever ritual.
Add uncertainty, the very real chance you are missing something or personally mentally ill, and it is almost impossible to construct even an extreme, world-ending event that would make such an act worthwhile. How do you know that would save everyone, after all? Or that the threat to the world is that assured?
But you'd need to start with, "what would I be willing to die for?", with the usual uncertain results in mind.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (21 hours later)
So the things you'd be willing to die for and the thing you'd be willing to see innocent strangers die for are the same?
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+0] Utopian Smut Peddler (22 hours later)
That doesn't make any sense and is vaguely inflammatory. Need more from a reply to pass the troll response effort barrier and keep our ratios close to 1.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (22 hours later)
keep our ratios close to 1.
Didn't quite get that.
But you're right, now that I think about it if we want to be objective then the life of any innocent person that is as healthy as the ritual performer and not a direct danger to anyone's life should be valued at least as high as his own (the performer's).
Except if probability clearly indicates that the ritualist is still needed to safe more lives which the sacrificed would very (very) probably not be able to.
What I do disagree with is how sure and/or how large the alleged catastrophy that is to be avoided must be. For instance sacrificing an innocent baby (or even a 6 year old child that is more clearly sentient and with all his life before him) to decrease the chance of humanity's extinction within the next year by 10% is far from lower bounds. Keep in mind that in OP's scenario this dark ritual has gone through enough science and experimentation for every informed person to be sure it works.
In other words, there are moral scenarios where sacrificing innocents is the right choice even if instead one could have sacrificed oneself.
And all this is without the arguments that some seem to state here that a newborns life has less ethical weight than that of an a bit older human being.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+0] Utopian Smut Peddler (a day later)
That isn't what I was saying at all. I spoke of the loss of personal identity through an unconscionable act being a necessarily self-sacrifice in this scenario. Not sure again what you are trying to say. I think you may have fallen into the trap and gotten lost.
Trusting the Nazi wizard science seems like a fundamental error as well. If it is really that well known, there have to be alternatives. I see no possible situation where trusting this information without personally verifying it and having other courses of action would be rational.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (a day later)
Distrust of "Nazi wizard science" is beyond the scope of this post.
This magic has been extensively studied, and its limits have been mapped out by an evil empire whose scientific methods were strong but whose infrastructure and ability to withstand invasions was not. We know that the baby-killing magic works. We know how it works. We know that it can't be short-circuited in all of the obvious (or even non-obvious) ways that you might immediately think about trying.
Also, how would you personally verify without, you know, dead babies?
Why would we lose our identity? What exactly do you even mean by that? People have done worse things without being suddenly replaced by doppelgangers. And if you mean change in personality because of guilt or something then it is probably by far not as severe as heroic suicide.
I think there is a large failure of communication going on between us two.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+0] Utopian Smut Peddler (a day later)
How do you know what you know? That is the only real failure I see. This scenario requires a buy-in that isn't rational.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (a day later)
How do you know about any scientific findings done with none of your personal acquaintances as witness? You or a source you trust reads the relevant scientific publications coming from several independent experimental results.
Anything else would mean that you disbelieve in pretty much all of modern science.
So the only buy-in required is that the black magic researchers were diligent in their record keeping, made and experimentally disproved each others theories and were funded by someone trying to profit from their findings by implementing practical applications. Hell, maybe they captured it all on video.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+1] Utopian Smut Peddler (a day later)
You experience the results of modern science every day, in every part of life. Science working as suggested is the most useful theory for interacting with reality as observed.
OP posited an entirely new branch of science that results in a specific, immutable result, with no other supporting technology or scientific assertions. That is what I have a problem with, that sort of "it is known" statement without more world building around it. Because people make those sorts of statements in the real world, even about science, and it is usually a logical fallacy built on a pile of bad assumptions.
Maybe it is only a small step in this world. Maybe sacrificing lab mice gets similar but lessor results. Knowing something like that would help, but it wasn't indicated. Maybe people making that decision have already done those experiments, have grown up in a world where that was okay, and place less value culturally on certain things. In which case the question is also poorly stated.
What was given was just a leap straight to the conclusion. It begged the question that this was horrific but necessary by its set up, implying all sorts of other odd things. That leap is not rational to make outside of hypotheticals, so I reject it almost automatically.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (a day later)
OP posited an entirely new branch of science that results in a specific, immutable result, with no other supporting technology or scientific assertions. That is what I have a problem with, that sort of "it is known" statement without more world building around it. Because people make those sorts of statements in the real world, even about science, and it is usually a logical fallacy built on a pile of bad assumptions.
No. OP posited a fantasy world, a parallel universe if you will, where a nation deemed evil by its neighbors applied said technology on a larger scale.
Maybe sacrificing lab mice gets similar but lessor results.
From OP:
We know that it can't be short-circuited in all of the obvious (or even non-obvious) ways that you might immediately think about trying.
I would say this includes substituting mass animal sacrifice. Remember the ritual is magical, not scientific. Similar to the teleporting nickel.
Maybe people making that decision have already done those experiments, have grown up in a world where that was okay, and place less value culturally on certain things.
The "Evil Empire" part seems to indicate that the society that did most science didn't put much value in the life of babies. Or at least not its leaders and its scientific community. Else they wouldn't be willing to sacrifice babies in control group experiments and in purposely botched rituals and such, which would be necessary for sound science.
The culture judging (fighting) the Empire, which eventually won, seems to not be okay with it. And judging from OP's later comments I'd wager that the protagonists "foster parents" were from the "good" culture, tried to replicate the ritual a considerable amount of time after the fall of Evil Empire amd in the end couldn't go through with it because of morals/feelings of guilt. Quote: "they can't bring themselves to do it."
I've been toying with when he'll learn about the ritual he was destined for, and what the ultimate goal of it would have been. His parents are meant to be morally ambiguous but mostly sympathetic, which means that there needs to be a fairly sound logic to their decision-making - something that you could argue might actually be "right", or at least something that sympathetic characters could have agreed was "right" before being presented with the reality of actually having blood on their hands.
All OP wants is not to trap us or who knows what. He wants our help. Our opinions on what the lower bounds need to be for the almost dark wizard foster parents to not be considered monsters even if they would have gone through. The lower bounds where the main character (who narrowly escaped sacrifice) has difficulty judging such actions unambiguously even after getting past the bias of loving his foster parents.
Or at least that is how I understood it.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [-1] Utopian Smut Peddler (a day later)
fantasy world
Remember the ritual is magical, not scientific
Then give up. If science doesn't work, it isn't worth talking about at this level. Nothing else you say, no matter how logical, matters. I refuse to argue opinions on magic.
[huge quote] All OP wants is not to trap us or who knows what.
Not in the original post. Not the original context.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (a day later)
I didn't mean science doesn't work. The scientific method always works, except if there is an outside force actively disrupting experiments. For which in this scenario there is no indication. What I meant is that often in such settings the new "magical" phenomenon can often not be deconstructed into smaller parts based on known physics. Similar to the nickel in this thread. As in "imagine a world were all known laws of nature are true except there is also this weird additional thing". Is this all really that hard to understand for someone who has read at least some of the rationalist fiction like HPMOR and such, which is what this whole subreddit is based on?
Not in the original post. Not the original context.
So he elaborated on it later on. Is that a crime now? And I am getting really confused about what you are trying to discuss in this thread. What did you understand the question to be and/or OP's goals for stating it? I dearly hope you're not just ascribing malicious intend on OP's part.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+1] Utopian Smut Peddler (2 days later)
Is this all really that hard to understand for someone who has read at least some of the rationalist fiction like HPMOR and such, which is what this whole subreddit is based on?
There is a difference between assuming a specific effect violates known laws and being asked to change critical thinking approaches simply because "it is known".
Your previous attempts to frame this as a reductionist argument about scientific proofs shows you don't understand this, which combined with your chosen arguments in this discussion makes me doubt your rationality and or your intent.
That does not inspire me to continue debate.
I dearly hope you're not just ascribing malicious intend on OP's part.
Your hopes are very close to my heart, so be assured that I meant simply that OP had chosen a classic ideological trap hypothetical as a basis for what was later explained as a plot point that wouldn't even actually occur in the story. I get a nice little cross on my post instead of reasoned debate because /r/rational is an echo chamber and because I didn't respond with the usual valuation shibboleths, like the other posters. At least half of those who cared enough to respond at all, decided it wasn't a valuable post.
OP fell into the trap, as well as most of the posters in this thread. It is false to assume the result is the one that needs the most focus to answer OP's question. The cost is not simply a six-pound-plus baby, but the context surrounding that choice as well.
The usual reaction by skilled debaters to this sort of trapped hypothetical is not to engage, but I have a better solution. One that doesn't seem to have been appreciated or even understood here. First, some context.
The classic trapped question which this mirrors is a lose/lose, with an appeal to emotion at one end and either a loaded question or a conclusion that begs the question at the other. Here is how the trap usually plays out.
Someone who isn't very rational asks something like, "would you kill a baby to save thousands of lives" – which is closely analogous to the results generated from OP's question.
Though clearly not what the OP meant, the questioner is usually trying to get the respondent to say either:
"No, I would not. Because taking positive actions-"
In which case the questioner can say, "Ha! You don't really believe in <Objectivist/brand-x utilitarian/etc> ideals then, or you would do it based on the cold, hard value of human lives."
Or the respondent can say, "Yes, it would save so many lives that I would do it, even though-"
In which case the questioner gets to say something like, "Ha! You baby killer! Everyone look at this baby killer and scorn all their future answers, because they would kill babies."
This is never productive debate, but it does allow the questioner to score social points with their equally shallow peers.
But this ignores what I see as the scientifically-based correct answer to such hypotheticals, and in real life.
There is an easy and rational answer to this trapped question, but no one was using it. That is why I suggested that people weren't taking into consideration the effects on themselves and their social and psychological situation. I'm sure many people in /r/rational think they are a cold, calculating internet superheros with a "secret dark side" who'd make the tough decisions after long and careful consideration. That they'd be sad but firmly resolute after making the right choice, before zooming off to do good elsewhere.
Anyone who thinks that is full of shit. Modern psychological medicine says so.
The OP's scenario suggests, and as you point out as well, that the society that the ritualists live in does not accept the act they are considering. They consider the act similarly to how we do, as does their society. They are not psychologically prepared to deal with the aftermath of performing this act -- they can't be, no one can -- and that must be taken into consideration.
The best minds in the world can't make a training program to generate solders who can kill other people trying to kill them without enormous psychological damage being inflicted, either in training or on the battlefield. And that act, killing in self defense or in wartime as part of a sanctioned military action, is usually something the society they will eventually return to is at least neutral about.
People who kill, even in self defense, are damaged. Period. They were before hand, with severe ASPD (so called "psychopaths"), or they were after, with some level of PTSD. No one who has been in a combat situation escapes without long-term PTSD, to some extent. Drone pilots and rear area medical support personal have severe, long term effects from their experiences as well, though not the same ones or to the same extent as people who have been shot at. Even those working in the agricultural field who have to kill (not even butcher) animals for a living are deeply affected.
Personally and ritually killing an infant, an act of cold-blooded murder, is so far off the scale of psychological trauma that it boggles the mind to even consider what it would do to a person. The results would be devastating. Especially an intelligent and self-reflective person who knows exactly what taking a life means. The simplifications people in this thread are making are absurd and short-sighted.
That is why:
a) I believe there are scientific reasons that such an act would be a self-sacrificial one as well, one that would destroy who you were forever and replace it with something psychologically damaged and less than what you were before.
and
b) The initial question was not really a positive one for getting the realistic and rationalist results the OP wanted.
This has nothing to do with some sort of magical doppelganger (what the fuck?) but is the certain result of such actions, as determined by modern psychology. You are not a special rationalist flower -- this means you, too.
Unless the person is not a rational actor, or is still in high school or otherwise ignorant, they would never sacrifice their own identity as a person who doesn't kill babies lightly. They would know what that does to people psychologically. And if they didn't, they would still likely crack when asked to actually wield the knife.
It can therefore not be reduced simply to the value of items in question -- babies vs. X, solve for most minimal acceptable X effect -- without considering the ritualist's own worth as an psychologically undamaged person who lives in a society that frowns on ritual baby murder. That goes on the BABIES side of the equation. No one was doing that rationally, so I did. And the hivemind, and you, gave me blinkered and disengaged grief for it.
This is just about all the effort I am willing to expend on the topic, even though it appears throughout your own contributions that the entire thing wasn't simply a trolling.
That was what I meant about ratios of effort. If you can get a troll to spend at least as much effort in a conversation as you are, their trolling has failed in large part. Usually, they won't bother. Hence my being unwilling to respond to single sentence disagreements early in conversations with multiple paragraphs of clarifying discourse.
Given that, I'm getting almost nothing out of this -- no insight or useful feedback on my ideas -- so I see no reason to continue after this summary post.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (2 days later)
I must say this is really well written. So well written that I am sad it is hidden in the "continue this thread -->" section. I finally understand what you mean by self sacrifice and you back it up with sound arguments I couldn't discern before.
And I agree with you that you have pretty much "won" this discussion, at least the one we two are having.
The only part I intuitively disagree with is the severity of "a)". That it really is an irredeemable loss of self almost akin to death. But who knows, that may well just be my inexperience on these matters. I don't know anyone personally who I know has killed another human being as far as I know.
I don't think this invalidates all the other posters contributions to the problem though. Because a character who made the "false" value calculation (last paragraph of your section 5) and came to the conclusion that doing it is the right thing, going so far as to procure a baby and convincing a friend to assist him, just to back out in the last moment because of human psychology and emotions is exactly the kind of sympathetic character I feel OP is going for. This thread alone shows how easily it seems for many of us to imagine going down the same path. (EDIT I mean imagine themselves having chosen such a path, not accurately imagine the consequences. That would be really hard.)
And one last question:
Even those working in the agricultural field who have to kill (not even butcher) animals for a living are deeply affected.
What do you mean by this? Do you mean that butchering is somehow different from killing and thus butchers are not thus affected? Or that "butcher" is a wrong word to use because "kill" is a better word to show the psychological weight of it?
If it is the former I am confused by where the distinction is. Maybe when you have to kill an animal unexpectedly (as opposed to one you planned to do it from the beginning to for food)?
If it is the latter I can only say that many of us have family on the land that don't seem in any way damaged or unwholesome even though they have killed animals with their own hands, sometimes not even using tools.
Thank you very much for your effort.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+2] Utopian Smut Peddler (2 days later)
I think you are correct about even rational-minded people who are unfamiliar with psychology assuming they would be "fine" after making such a calculated choice, simply because it was logical based on their knowledge and assumptions.
I'm not sure how that might affect the original hypothetical or the later story plot point based on it. It depends on what the author prefers to say on the matter.
Briefly, to butcher is also to skillfully dismember and prepare a corpse for consumption. I meant to emphasize that the killing (specifically killing cattle) was usually very disconnected from the blood and guts of other parts of the process, though this point might not be important. If they had to also repeatedly complete the process, stripping down the animal they had just killed, the impact would likely be even greater.
Dead animals, ones not linked directly to immediate consumption, have a strong effect on other animals. It is stressful being around dead animals, more so those close to the same size as or identifiable as being of the same species. Humans are no exception.
The point was, most people on that stage of processing, the actual killing, don't last in their jobs as long as others, often reporting that this was because of the psychological weight of the active act of killing repeatedly.
But even doing so once changes someone, if in no other way than making the next time usually either easier or harder to enact. The contextual elements of being on a farm help cushion this, as does the support from society for doing valuable and historically honored work. I think there is plenty of evidence that killing animals as part of farm work is psychologically damaging, if relatively minor and easily compensated for in western society.
Though do note that many Asian cultures make those who kill and handle dead bodies of animals and humans the lowest of low classes, castes that are sometimes literally referred to as "untouchables" now in popular media. This was historically done for religious reasons, but is starting to die off as those societies become more modern and rational in their outlooks. I think it would be interesting to see what effect this had on values and psychology of those involved, but I am not aware of any studies on this and it seems far beyond the scope of this discussion.
I guess if you take the next logical step with this story idea, and have a world where such rituals were common place, it might be important. The practitioners would surely be part of a destructed and maligned subclass, in that case.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (2 days later)
I know several people in my village who have strangled chicken or broken a rabbits neck before proceeding to clean them. The psychological damage must be really minor. And that is not even taking in to consideration how many people hunt with a gun and such.
But maybe it adds up if done routinely and repeatedly instead of only once every few months or something. I wouldn't know.
Anyway, this has little to do with killing humans. All of this has made me very curious how people managed these problems in the days where raids, war and slaughter were more common. Especially when you hear of some torture-executions that were typical punishments for some transgressions.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+2] Utopian Smut Peddler (2 days later)
I think that last question is best answered: history was a shitty time, people did shitty things to each other pretty much all of the time. Those tortures were so extreme because they affected viewers and kept them in line. It was a literally brute forced solution to crime prevention and civil order.
It is much better now, and people aren't expected to be exposed to that sort of extreme violence and death on a daily basis. There are some theories that civilization has been selecting for people saner and saner, breeding for humans who are calmer and less chimp-like in their behaviors. This doesn't work with natural selection, too short a timescale, but it might with other selection effects.
So it could be that historically, people were simply less sane, and these things affected them less. But I think that unlikely. It seems more likely that people were just traumatized from birth, and simply went through life damaged in that way.