I will try to read everyone’s comments and the related articles that have been shared. I haven’t yet, but I’m going on a trip today — I may have time on the way.
To be clear: I am against utilitarianism. It is not my personal value system. It seems like an SBF-type-figure could justify any action if the lives of trillions of future people are in the balance.
The utilitarians who aren’t taking radical actions to achieve their ends just have a failure of imagination and ambition relative to SBF.
It seems like an SBF-type-figure could justify any action if the lives of trillions of future people are in the balance.
This doesn’t seem specific to utilitarianism. I think most ethical views would suggest that many radical actions would be acceptable if billions of lives hung in the balance. The ethical views that wouldn’t allow such radical actions would have their own crazy implications. Utilitarianism does make it easier to justify such actions, but with numbers so large I don’t think it generally makes a difference.
Even if other views in fact have the same implications as utilitarianism here, it’s possible that that the effects of believing in utiltarianism are particularly psychological pernicious in this sort of context. (Though my guess is the psychologically important things are just take high stakes seriously, lack of risk aversion, and being prepared to buck common-sense, and that those are correlated with believing utilitarianism but mostly not caused by it. But that is just a guess.)
‘The utilitarians who aren’t taking radical actions to achieve their ends just have a failure of imagination and ambition relative to SBF.’ Quite clearly, though, this has blown up in SBF’s face. Maybe the expected value was still good, but it’s entirely possible that the (many) utilitarians who think bucking conventional morality and law to this degree nearly always does more harm than good are simply correct, in which case utilitarianism itself condemns doing so (at least absent very strong evidence that your case is one of the exceptions).
I will try to read everyone’s comments and the related articles that have been shared. I haven’t yet, but I’m going on a trip today — I may have time on the way.
To be clear: I am against utilitarianism. It is not my personal value system. It seems like an SBF-type-figure could justify any action if the lives of trillions of future people are in the balance.
The utilitarians who aren’t taking radical actions to achieve their ends just have a failure of imagination and ambition relative to SBF.
This doesn’t seem specific to utilitarianism. I think most ethical views would suggest that many radical actions would be acceptable if billions of lives hung in the balance. The ethical views that wouldn’t allow such radical actions would have their own crazy implications. Utilitarianism does make it easier to justify such actions, but with numbers so large I don’t think it generally makes a difference.
Even if other views in fact have the same implications as utilitarianism here, it’s possible that that the effects of believing in utiltarianism are particularly psychological pernicious in this sort of context. (Though my guess is the psychologically important things are just take high stakes seriously, lack of risk aversion, and being prepared to buck common-sense, and that those are correlated with believing utilitarianism but mostly not caused by it. But that is just a guess.)
‘The utilitarians who aren’t taking radical actions to achieve their ends just have a failure of imagination and ambition relative to SBF.’ Quite clearly, though, this has blown up in SBF’s face. Maybe the expected value was still good, but it’s entirely possible that the (many) utilitarians who think bucking conventional morality and law to this degree nearly always does more harm than good are simply correct, in which case utilitarianism itself condemns doing so (at least absent very strong evidence that your case is one of the exceptions).