classical utilitarianism will sometimes endorse breaking some moral rules
Classical utilitarianism endorses maximising total wellbeing. Whether this involves breaking āmoral rulesā or not is, in my view, an empirical question. For the vast majority of cases, not breaking āmoral rulesā leads to more total wellbeing than breaking them, but we should be open to the contrary. There are many examples of people breaking āmoral rulesā in some sense (e.g. lying) which are widely recognised as good deeds (widespread fraud is obviously not one such example).
I think classical total utilitarianism + short-ish AI timelines + longtermism unavoidably endorses widespread fraud to fund AI safety research.
Agree that there are examples of when common-sense morality endorses breaking moral rules and even breaking the law, egāillegal protests against authoritarian leaders, nationalist violence against European colonialists, violence against Nazi soldiers
I think classical total utilitarianism + short-ish AI timelines + longtermism unavoidably endorses widespread fraud to fund AI safety research.
Yes, I can see this being true for some cases, especially if the people whose money is lost are pretty wealthy (e.g. billionaires), and the likelihood of the fraud being detected is super low (e.g. 10^-6). For these cases, I think we should be open to fraud being good. However, this does not mean at all endorsing fraud, because that would have pretty bad effects, and would be incompatible with the probability of fraud being detected being super low.
I agree.
Classical utilitarianism endorses maximising total wellbeing. Whether this involves breaking āmoral rulesā or not is, in my view, an empirical question. For the vast majority of cases, not breaking āmoral rulesā leads to more total wellbeing than breaking them, but we should be open to the contrary. There are many examples of people breaking āmoral rulesā in some sense (e.g. lying) which are widely recognised as good deeds (widespread fraud is obviously not one such example).
I think classical total utilitarianism + short-ish AI timelines + longtermism unavoidably endorses widespread fraud to fund AI safety research.
Agree that there are examples of when common-sense morality endorses breaking moral rules and even breaking the law, egāillegal protests against authoritarian leaders, nationalist violence against European colonialists, violence against Nazi soldiers
Yes, I can see this being true for some cases, especially if the people whose money is lost are pretty wealthy (e.g. billionaires), and the likelihood of the fraud being detected is super low (e.g. 10^-6). For these cases, I think we should be open to fraud being good. However, this does not mean at all endorsing fraud, because that would have pretty bad effects, and would be incompatible with the probability of fraud being detected being super low.