I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable.

I have developed a lengthy repertoire of thought experiments over the years (ask me the one about hiring a private eye to spy on your girlfriend*), and I am sad to see two of my favorites violated in one day.

First, Matt Rognlie:

Say that an all-powerful being walks up and offers you a trade. You have two options: you can either (1) permanently satisfy the basic needs of everyone on the planet or (2) save one life. Which do you choose? Obviously (1).

No, not (1), or at least not obviously. The whole point of Darkness at Noon, reviewed by Christopher this very day, is that "twice two are not four when the mathematical units are human beings."

He's right to say that, at some level, we have to put a price on human life, but he's picked the wrong thought experiment. The one you wanted, Matt, is the artificial heart that costs a hundred billion dollars to make. Comes in handy when talking about health care.

Then there's John Holbo, quoting from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

To seek to be punished because one likes it, is pathological, a perversion of the normal response, which is to shun or endure one’s punishment as one might other pains, burdens, deprivations, and discomforts. (Only among the Raskolnikovs of the world is one’s deserved punishment welcomed as a penance.)

He adds his own comments:

. . . in the case of punishment it seems that there must be a positive dislike – actual desire not to receive the thing in question: otherwise it isn’t punishment. (If the punishee desires the punishment in question, or is indifferent to it, it isn’t punishment.)

This strikes me as strange. Holbo wants to explain this as a "perverse," "masochistic" second-order desire, but wanting to be punished when you've done wrong is a normal intuition. Isn't the canon full-to-brimming with men and women in search of redemption, and isn't penance usually a big part of that?

More importantly, if human beings don't want to be punished when they've done wrong, why is it true that the most infuriating thing your mother can say is "I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed?"

*The Private Eye Thought Experiment that Proves Traditionalism: Imagine that you're wealthy enough to hire a private investigator without noticing the expense. Your girlfriend has never given you reason to think she's unfaithful, but the private eye could send you a fax once a week saying "SHE'S NOT CHEATING ON YOU" and she would never find out about it. Would you do it? No, right? Verifiable truth isn't everything, QED.