Let's assume a traditional all-poweful/good/knowing God exists. — RogueAI
RogueAI,
By “incremental morality,” do you mean something like the following?
• Sacrifice sick eighty-year-old Joe so that infant Pete can live. Good.
• Sacrifice sick eighty-year-old Joe so that infant Pete can avoid years of severe torture which will leave him alive but permanently damaged physical and mentally. Good, probably.
• Sacrifice sick eighty-year-old Joe so that infant Pete can avoid a few days in the hospital with Covid which will leave him permanently disabled in some not-too-serious way. Good or bad?
• Sacrifice sick eighty-year-old Joe so that Pete can have a fun 1st birthday party. Bad, definitely.
Somewhere along the line as the consequences to infant Pete become less serious, sacrificing Joe flips from good to bad. But exactly where does it flip? It seems like your OP is related to the sorites paradox. — Art48
My question works equally well with an omnibenevolent machine. — RogueAI
But suppose we looked at a middling case of Trolley Car, where the answer was not so easy, and said to this god: Now, earlier, you said it was OK to sacrifice one chimp and and two homeless people for two scientists and three business innovators on the cusp of discovery. What if two puppies and a grandma-in-a-rocking-chair are on the track and there's the London Symphony orchestra in the trolley? What then??? — RogueAI
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