AI ethics rhetoric debate: are trolley-problem thought experiments a consent-extraction trick?
zetalyrae · x · 2026-11-09
A debate on rhetorical tricks in AI ethics discourse: Zach Weiner laments that many people treat considering abstract moral hypotheticals as immoral. @softminus counters that such scenarios in public discourse are often used to extract assent to bizarre or inhuman principles — elicit agreement on resonant examples, extract a 'universal principle', then insist on its consistent application across contexts where it shouldn't apply. The images also mock the famous '10^100 shrimp' argument: with fewer than 10^100 atoms in the universe, invoking that number is itself a consent-extraction move.
Related event: Cartoonist Says Abstract Thought Experiments Are Seen as Immoral(2 posts)→
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