Today I Killed; Tomorrow I Will Kill Again

Published on October 13, 2026 8:36 PM GMT When must we kill them? Now. Later. Continuously. Infinitely. A very specific trigger warning: Noah Smith, if you ever see this, please do proceed with caution. Based on a true story. A favorite pastime of mine is wandering about in nature’s splendor. The whole experience is delightful: The planning, the topo maps, the gear setup, the drive, the type II hedonism of light, voluntary suffering at an oxygen-deprived altitude. The locomoting while chatting with friends, or solitarily listening to a podcast. The sheer adventure of exploring the Earth. Fun for the whole internal family of experiencing and remembering selves. My ancestors studied hunting and gathering and then agricultural science so that I might have liberty to study an approximation of hunting and gathering. And it’s a great way to stay in shape. So there I was at the edge of civilization when it all happened, on approach to the trailhead to climb a mountain. Driving my still-quite-new, designed-overseas-but-made-in-America, symmetrical all-wheel drive, turbocharged, off-roading family station wagon (practical and a blast to drive). Digesting my favorite fast food breakfast—a superstimulus of sweet and savory delight, and purchased at a heavy discount. Drinking my favorite artificially sweetened mountain beverage (zero, not diet). Listening to one of my favorite podcasts. Wearing my new, limited-edition desert boots of ethically sourced exotic leather, designed by hippy shoemakers across the ocean, and made in a different country across the other ocean to take advantage of market efficiencies. Peak human experience really. Brought to me by globalism. The weather was perfect. There was just a bit more pavement, passing some cabins by, and then a few dusty miles up the canyon. What a great day. All my problems were behind me for the moment. Up ahead, I noticed some fresh roadkill in the other lane. Probably a jackrabbit; could be a racoon or maybe a skunk though, with the nearby streams. Or a cat. Sad. Ah well, so it goes. Happens all the time. I don’t even have to adjust course to avoid it. Onward and upward. The long ears of the prostrate jackrabbit twitched. Fuck. I thought. Loudly. That was not the wind as I passed next to it. For I had seen a twitch; I knew it, and I knew that (nature’s) god knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it; at least I knew that by so doing I would offend (nature’s) god, and come under condemnation. “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!” I shouted to myself in particular. “FUCK fuck Fuck!” I fired for effect as I pulled off the road. The concept of moral luck briefly traversed my thoughts. I had been called and chosen. What kind of monster just drives away? You had an accident; you chose to flee the scene. Finish what you started. Do your moral duty. You break it, you need to make sure the animal bought it. I instantaneously had realized there was no alternative. Hence my reaction. (You probably did too. Self-evident, really. It’s no trolley problem.) All I could do was evaluate means, not the end. Still, I employed various moral heuristics in rapid succession to calculate the expected value of my options, hoping I could conceive of a way around the clear implications for the sum total of utility in the universe. And my seemingly obligatory role in it by dint of happenstance. I know the unit of caring is dollars, but what is the unit of suffering?[1] Do we measure that per second? Log-scale magnitude maybe adjusted by neuron count? Who is my moral patient? A moral person’s a moral person no matter how small. The Life You Can End. Killing What We Can. Time Is Up Decision Theory. What would the best version of myself do? What would someone with 10X my agency do? Actually, scratch that; seems unlikely to go well if I try something drastic like taking this little guy to an emergency vet on Sunday in rural America. Can you imagine a jackrabbit with those wheelchair hind legs? I can’t really justify Make-a-Wish, Roadkill Rescue Edition. It is better that one rabbit should perish than that a budget should dwindle and perish in veterinary bills. After modeling my utility function, the rabbit’s utility function, and the utility function of an infinite, uncaring impartial universalist, I found no alternative. Consequentialism can be a real hassle sometimes. But I don’t believe deontology or virtue ethics would provide me an out here either. All models are wrong; some are useful. Ethics is knowing the difference. And supererogation just wasn’t going to cut it any way I sliced it. I got out of the car. Thinking step-by-step. Alright, how am I going to do it? There are cabins right over there and plenty of recreationists within earshot. Well that’s unfortunate. The modular emergency shovel kit with the axe head attachment it is, then. Visceral. How am I going to handle it? I do have work gloves. What are the odds I’ll make a clean kill with a single blow; how traumatic was that going to