Great points, Michael. I found the situation intuitively quite bad, and therefore stumbled into some motivated reasoning. I would be okay with the situation described by matty as long as the lives of the children were sufficiently good (to offset the negative effects to the mothers, and the pain involved in the murders), and neglecting indirect effects.
Nevertheless, in practice, if a bunch of humans contacted me describing their great plan to produce lots of utility along the lines described by matty, I would just report them to the police. I think having such plans in real life correlates with bad outcomes (compared to non-existence), even if the plan itself describes a good outcome (compared to non-existence).
Great points, Michael. I found the situation intuitively quite bad, and therefore stumbled into some motivated reasoning. I would be okay with the situation described by matty as long as the lives of the children were sufficiently good (to offset the negative effects to the mothers, and the pain involved in the murders), and neglecting indirect effects.
Nevertheless, in practice, if a bunch of humans contacted me describing their great plan to produce lots of utility along the lines described by matty, I would just report them to the police. I think having such plans in real life correlates with bad outcomes (compared to non-existence), even if the plan itself describes a good outcome (compared to non-existence).