Executive summary: Philosophers’ training in tidy thought experiments can distort their practical moral judgment and lead them to mistakenly believe that sufficiently high stakes can justify unethical actions in the real world, as exemplified by some philosophers’ defenses of SBF’s fraud.
Key points:
Philosophers are trained to accept stipulations in thought experiments, but this can lead to distorted practical judgments if theoretical verdicts are misapplied to real-world situations.
High stakes make choosing the consequentially better option more important, but do not inherently make disreputable actions more likely to be consequentially better.
SBF’s fraud was likely negative in expectation for longtermist causes, considering reputational damage and deterrence of future funders and supporters.
Irrationally believing an action is justified based on respectable philosophical grounds does not provide an actual moral defense if the empirical beliefs are unreasonable.
The deeper problem is motivated reasoning leading people to conveniently believe right-making features obtain when they actually don’t, so more caution is needed.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: Philosophers’ training in tidy thought experiments can distort their practical moral judgment and lead them to mistakenly believe that sufficiently high stakes can justify unethical actions in the real world, as exemplified by some philosophers’ defenses of SBF’s fraud.
Key points:
Philosophers are trained to accept stipulations in thought experiments, but this can lead to distorted practical judgments if theoretical verdicts are misapplied to real-world situations.
High stakes make choosing the consequentially better option more important, but do not inherently make disreputable actions more likely to be consequentially better.
SBF’s fraud was likely negative in expectation for longtermist causes, considering reputational damage and deterrence of future funders and supporters.
Irrationally believing an action is justified based on respectable philosophical grounds does not provide an actual moral defense if the empirical beliefs are unreasonable.
The deeper problem is motivated reasoning leading people to conveniently believe right-making features obtain when they actually don’t, so more caution is needed.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.