I’m still skeptical of using ‘obviousness’/‘plausibility’ as evidence of a theory being correct—as a mental move it risks proving too much. Multiple theories might have equally obvious implications. Plenty of previously-unthinkable views would have been seen to be deeply un-obvious.
You have your intuitions and I have mine—we can each say they’re obvious to us and it gets us no further, surely? Perhaps I’m being dense.
In Don’t Valorize The Void you say:
Omelas is a very good place, and it’s deeply irrational to condemn it. We can demonstrate this by noting that from behind a veil of ignorance, where you had an equal chance to be any affected individual (including the kid in the basement), it would be prudent to gamble on Omelas.
If it was so straightforwardly irrational (dare I say it—insensible), Le Guin would presumably never have written the story in the first place! Not everyone behind the veil of ignorance would take the gamble, despite the naked assertion that ‘it would be prudent’ to do so.
I’m going to bow out—wasn’t my intention to try to “silence” anybody and I’m not quite sure how we got there!