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I'm under the impression that a lot of tech / 'rational' people are utilitarian consequentialists, and if you tell a good utilitarian story, a lot of them will

by psyc 5y ago

I'm under the impression that a lot of tech / 'rational' people are utilitarian consequentialists, and if you tell a good utilitarian story, a lot of them will sign up. Like, liberty and privacy sound nice, but how many lives do they save? I also have a theory that a lot of programmers think it's natural to fix bugs in society by writing (U.S.) code.

lyubalesya 5y ago
> Like, liberty and privacy sound nice, but how many lives do they save? When considering this question, one should be careful to distinguish between how many lives are saved with "the society we are currently, but without liberty or privacy", and with "the kind of society we will become if we lose liberty or privacy". Lives "saved" are also a poor metric. How much is a life worth, spent inside a cage? Many would be willing to risk death for liberty. In fact, they have.