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> You've outlined a form of deontological ethics, I had to look this up. You've given a modern label to an ancient concept sometimes known as the Golden Rule.

> You've outlined a form of deontological ethics, I had to look this up. You've given a modern label to an ancient concept sometimes known as the Golden Rule. I'm not sure why. >> It's like going back in time to kill Hitler's grandfather to prevent Hitler's birth. > This is a strawman. (A really loaded one at that.) It's not intended that way, and I'm posing it with honesty. If it's too loaded, then replace Hitler with, I don't know, <insert_bad_guy_here>. It doesn't matter who the bad guy is; the point is: you kill an innocent person (grandfather_of_bad_guy) in order to mold the future in a way that you think will save more, other innocent lives. Correct?

xpe 3y ago
> I had to look this up. Great! Philosophers have explored the ideas of "inherent goodness" versus "goodness because of the effects" for thousands of years. People face these decisions everyday, whether they realize it or not. > You've given a modern label to an ancient concept sometimes known as the Golden Rule. I'm not sure why. First, I didn't discover the idea of deontological ethics (DE). From Brittanica: > In deontological ethics an action is considered morally good because of some characteristic of the action itself, not because the product of the action is good. Deontological ethics holds that at least some acts are morally obligatory regardless of their consequences for human welfare. Descriptive of such ethics are such expressions as “Duty for duty’s sake,” “Virtue is its own reward,” and “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.” Second, the Golden Rule is not the same thing as DE. Consider this: > Like most key tenets of ethics, the golden rule shows two major sides: one promoting fairness and individual entitlement, conceived as reciprocity; the other promoting helpfulness and generosity to the end of social welfare. Both the Kantian and Utilitarian traditions focus on only one side, furthering the great distinctions in philosophical ethics—the deontology-teleology and justice-benevolence distinctions. For the general theory project, this one-sidedness is purposeful, a research tool for reductive explanation. > > - https://iep.utm.edu/goldrule/ https://iep.utm.edu/goldrule/ If you want to follow the Golden Rule, you need to think about consequences! Hence probability over future scenarios. You _really_ need to branch out more from Hacker News. Go read some philosophy!
xpe 3y ago
> It's not intended that way, and I'm posing it with honesty. Yes, I believe you. But still, I don't care for your framing of it; it is still too loaded. When learning about a new concept, one owe it to the concept to give it a fair chance. It is all too easy to misrepresent an idea. (To me, when looking at your comments overall, it seems possible that this is what you are doing: you aren't fully open to really understanding the idea; you've already _judged_ and _dismissed_ it.) Aside: To be clear, I don't think "open mindedness" is the ideal _end_ goal. Open mindedness is a _tool_ to evaluate and understand. But the _goal_ is to draw conclusions in order to act wisely. > If it's too loaded, then replace Hitler with, I don't know, <insert_bad_guy_here>. It doesn't matter who the bad guy is; the point is: you kill an innocent person (grandfather_of_bad_guy) in order to mold the future in a way that you think will save more, other innocent lives. Correct? To do consequentialist ethics (CE) rigorously, one has to explore all likely outcomes. In my view, the best intellectual framework for doing so would be to build and evaluate a probabilistic tree of possible outcomes over a suitable time frame. See Decision Theory [1] The example you gave has two major problems. First, it offers a false dichotomy. Why would one think the only choice is to kill an innocent ancestor or just "let" the bad guy do all the terrible things? Second, even to a pure consequentialist who is willing to set aside the "present value of a life" (I don't even like saying this), killing a person has negative consequences on their family, friends, community, city, state, and country. Of course there are differences between CE and DE, but in practice I don't think they are as jarring as people can make them out to be. The specially-constructed "wedge" examples get too much airtime in my opinion. It is far more important to teach people about decision theory and how it applies to not just economics and cybersecurity but also morality. I've written enough here for now. I hope you view your questions as jumping off points for additional philosophical investigation. I have seen for myself that studying these ideas is worthwhile: personally and from studying history. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory

xpe 3y ago

> I had to look this up. Great! Philosophers have explored the ideas of "inherent goodness" versus "goodness because of the effects" for thousands of years. People face these decisions everyday, whether they realize it or not. > You've given a modern label to an ancient concept sometimes known as the Golden Rule. I'm not sure why. First, I didn't discover the idea of deontological ethics (DE). From Brittanica: > In deontological ethics an action is considered morally good because of some characteristic of the action itself, not because the product of the action is good. Deontological ethics holds that at least some acts are morally obligatory regardless of their consequences for human welfare. Descriptive of such ethics are such expressions as “Duty for duty’s sake,” “Virtue is its own reward,” and “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.” Second, the Golden Rule is not the same thing as DE. Consider this: > Like most key tenets of ethics, the golden rule shows two major sides: one promoting fairness and individual entitlement, conceived as reciprocity; the other promoting helpfulness and generosity to the end of social welfare. Both the Kantian and Utilitarian traditions focus on only one side, furthering the great distinctions in philosophical ethics—the deontology-teleology and justice-benevolence distinctions. For the general theory project, this one-sidedness is purposeful, a research tool for reductive explanation. > > - https://iep.utm.edu/goldrule/ https://iep.utm.edu/goldrule/ If you want to follow the Golden Rule, you need to think about consequences! Hence probability over future scenarios. You _really_ need to branch out more from Hacker News. Go read some philosophy!

xpe 3y ago

> It's not intended that way, and I'm posing it with honesty. Yes, I believe you. But still, I don't care for your framing of it; it is still too loaded. When learning about a new concept, one owe it to the concept to give it a fair chance. It is all too easy to misrepresent an idea. (To me, when looking at your comments overall, it seems possible that this is what you are doing: you aren't fully open to really understanding the idea; you've already _judged_ and _dismissed_ it.) Aside: To be clear, I don't think "open mindedness" is the ideal _end_ goal. Open mindedness is a _tool_ to evaluate and understand. But the _goal_ is to draw conclusions in order to act wisely. > If it's too loaded, then replace Hitler with, I don't know, <insert_bad_guy_here>. It doesn't matter who the bad guy is; the point is: you kill an innocent person (grandfather_of_bad_guy) in order to mold the future in a way that you think will save more, other innocent lives. Correct? To do consequentialist ethics (CE) rigorously, one has to explore all likely outcomes. In my view, the best intellectual framework for doing so would be to build and evaluate a probabilistic tree of possible outcomes over a suitable time frame. See Decision Theory [1] The example you gave has two major problems. First, it offers a false dichotomy. Why would one think the only choice is to kill an innocent ancestor or just "let" the bad guy do all the terrible things? Second, even to a pure consequentialist who is willing to set aside the "present value of a life" (I don't even like saying this), killing a person has negative consequences on their family, friends, community, city, state, and country. Of course there are differences between CE and DE, but in practice I don't think they are as jarring as people can make them out to be. The specially-constructed "wedge" examples get too much airtime in my opinion. It is far more important to teach people about decision theory and how it applies to not just economics and cybersecurity but also morality. I've written enough here for now. I hope you view your questions as jumping off points for additional philosophical investigation. I have seen for myself that studying these ideas is worthwhile: personally and from studying history. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory