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Basically they're doing a utilitarian calculus. But since our calculus is basically all pretend, we can assign arbitrary importance to anything we want just by
by frgtpsswrdlame 4y ago
Basically they're doing a utilitarian calculus. But since our calculus is basically all pretend, we can assign arbitrary importance to anything we want just by daydreaming the costs and percentages of these super unlikely, super catastrophic events.
- NateEag 4y agoThank you for so clearly and simply articulating the fundamental problem of utilitarianism.
- Planktonne 4y agoI don't think this is a problem with utilitarianism itself; the problem is utilitarianism as practiced by people who are unable to estimate risk practically. This is not unusual - it's a core symptom of various mental health problems. There's even a fairy tale about this - a family of foolish people who catastrophise so much that they are unable to accomplish anything [1]. People assigning bizarre weights to unlikely probabilities is very human, and problematic regardless of ethics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Elsie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Elsie
- NateEag 4y agoI personally think an honest look at human ability to estimate risk shows that as a species we're bad enough at it that utilitarianism is intractable. I may, of course, suffer from the very problem you're describing.