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> Well, yeah, that's the fundamental failure of utilitarianism: it's so abstract as to say nothing meaningful, because it explicitly delegates the entire defini
by Vecr 3y ago
> Well, yeah, that's the fundamental failure of utilitarianism: it's so abstract as to say nothing meaningful, because it explicitly delegates the entire definition of what actually is ethical to the utility function, and nothing past that is distinct from any other ethical theory.
I think it's honest, as it really forces you to make a distinction between good (what should be) and real (what is). "Should" goes into the utility function, "is" goes into the world model. I'd honestly recommend giving it a shot if you have free time.
> I doubt that; this and your prior comment are the second and third time I've seen it in eleven years of active participation here.
It's the anti-flame war/spam thing kicking in. I'm manually responding to the "wrong post" but that's pretty much fine.
- throwanem 3y agoOh, I see. If you click the timestamp on a comment, that view always has the reply form. Only in the thread view is the reply link hidden for the first few minutes after a comment is posted. I'm familiar with Hume. The is-ought distinction has value, but is orthogonal to utilitarianism, if not explicitly opposed.
- Vecr 3y agoWell, it's better than EA or e/acc thinking they are objectively correct for some reason. More with e/acc I suppose, why would "max entropy" be a worthy utility function unless you confuse is and ought?
- throwanem 3y agoYeah, that's pretty much my point. Aside from my not sharing their ethical bankruptcy, I also don't special-case my analysis the way they like to do; that they can hew so closely to utilitarian precepts and still fail so signally demonstrates that the bankruptcy is no special feature of their variant, but a trait of the theory overall, always latent if not always expressed.