Paul Bloom: evaluation

Transcript context

…But you can take that money and save human lives. I think Oxfam has claimed it’s a few thousand dollars well spent if it could save a human life. Whatever the sum is, it’s not ginormous, right? So, how much would you have to be paid to strangle a cat? One reason why I have liked that question is, people want a lot of money. In fact, this was an experiment done by Thorndike, the great behaviorist, over a hundred years ago, and he asked that question. He also asked people, “How much would I have to pay you for you to take a pair of pliers and pull out one of your front teeth?” And people want more money to strangle a cat than to have this painful, agonizing, disfiguring thing, which, I think, says something nice about people. But then the fact is that it’s not so nice about people from a strict utilitarian calculus. You should actually ask to be paid some amount of money for which you can then save many, many lives — or, for that matter, save many, many cats. Our morality doesn’t work that way. We have a visceral response to certain behaviors. It doesn’t translate to a cold-blooded assessment of pain and pleasure. Do you feel you should try to train yourself out of being unwilling to strangle the cat, or you’re going to double down on how you are?…

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