This is another one of those thought experiments where I’d annoy the asker by challenging the legitimacy of the thought experiment. ;) No cat killing for me.
This may have come up in the audience questions but if I were to engage the thought experiment itself, I’d say that I have no idea how much my threat/promise to my friend actually impacted their odds of suicide. I wouldn’t kill the cat (assuming I even made the promise/threat to kill it in the first place) because it clearly didn’t act as a deterrent for my friend and thus I wouldn’t need to maintain a “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” commitment to killing it after they died.
If the person posing the thought experiment insists that I have special, Omega-like information about how the promise/threat impacted my friend’s odds of committing suicide, I’d push back on the fact that the experiment is pretending I have access to magic knowledge and drawing too much real-life impacting from magical thought experiments is a slippery slope into madness (e.g. Bentham’s Bulldog).
The idea is you sat down with your friend to discuss this, and she told you that she thinks it would reduce her likelihood of killing herself by quite a bit. But yes, for most people, who won't kill the cat regardless, the correct answer is to not make that promise!
I personally would make this promise for any friend whose life I value more than a cat's (depending on how much of a deterrent it is. Probably not if it's only like a 0.1% decrease)
This is another one of those thought experiments where I’d annoy the asker by challenging the legitimacy of the thought experiment. ;) No cat killing for me.
This may have come up in the audience questions but if I were to engage the thought experiment itself, I’d say that I have no idea how much my threat/promise to my friend actually impacted their odds of suicide. I wouldn’t kill the cat (assuming I even made the promise/threat to kill it in the first place) because it clearly didn’t act as a deterrent for my friend and thus I wouldn’t need to maintain a “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” commitment to killing it after they died.
If the person posing the thought experiment insists that I have special, Omega-like information about how the promise/threat impacted my friend’s odds of committing suicide, I’d push back on the fact that the experiment is pretending I have access to magic knowledge and drawing too much real-life impacting from magical thought experiments is a slippery slope into madness (e.g. Bentham’s Bulldog).
The idea is you sat down with your friend to discuss this, and she told you that she thinks it would reduce her likelihood of killing herself by quite a bit. But yes, for most people, who won't kill the cat regardless, the correct answer is to not make that promise!
I personally would make this promise for any friend whose life I value more than a cat's (depending on how much of a deterrent it is. Probably not if it's only like a 0.1% decrease)