Jeremy Stangroom

If that person was no longer actively creating new works, their death is no proximate cause for cessation of benefits derived from them.

I don't see how the two situations differ. They seem to be exact mirror images of each other.

The two situations differ because being saddened by a death is *not* the same as celebrating a death. Morally, emotionally, different.

Mirror images, as I said. Mutatis mutandis. Sadness and joy are symmetrical feelings, aren't they?

Rationally, it doesn't make sense that many people felt sad when Harper Lee died. But it's a pretty normal human reaction.

Right. But joy/sadness at a person's death or suffering (regardless of whether we know them), aren't *morally* equivalent.

You are emotionally indifferent to 99.999% of human deaths. You'd go insane if you weren't.

The conditions that make us react with sadness are worth defining explicitly (though space & time don't allow now).