Effective Altruism: An Introduction – 80,000 Hours cover image

Eight: Prof Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics, & harnessing the brainpower of academia to tackle the most important research questions

Effective Altruism: An Introduction – 80,000 Hours

CHAPTER

Psychopath Button

In the psychopath button case, imagine that there is a button in front of you. And what this button does, if you press it, is that it causes all psychopaths in the world to die. By your light, you currently have very low credence that you are a psychopath. But the catch is, you have very high credence that only a psychopath would press this kind of button. Now your decision is whether to press this button or not. Deciding to press the button looks like a really bad decision. After you conditionalize on the fact that you've made that decision, you think it was a really bad decisions.

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