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I'd like to highly and thoroughly endorse utilitarianism as the best moral / ethical theory / framework to live one's life by. For an up-to-date introduction at

• lazzlazzlazz 2y ago
  I used to be a utilitarian 15-20 years ago after reading the work of Peter Singer and many others. These days, I have to admit its application has been almost without exception backwards if not reprehensible. It seems to lead inevitably either to (obviously repugnant and utility-destroying) communism or a strangely twisted and fruitless hyper-rationality (think contemporary Effective Altruism). In the end, and perhaps in service of my original utilitarian impulses, I feel that entirely abandoning utilitarianism is the right path. This is sometimes referred to as `esoteric utilitarianism`, something that Sidgwick wrote about — suggesting that even teaching people about utilitarianism (himself being a utilitarian) might be immoral. Virtue ethics has been particularly appealing!
  • yannyu 2y ago
    Utilitarian analysis inevitably is coopted by those in power to frame "good" as what the powerful want. For example, some say it's more important to keep people's stock-invested retirement accounts solvent by increasing stock prices rather than take corporate profits and pay people who can't even afford groceries or rent, let alone invest in a retirement account.
  • etblg 2y ago
    > It seems to lead inevitably either to (obviously repugnant and utility-destroying) communism Why is that obvious, why is that inevitable, and how is this inevitable communism utility-destroying?
  • jhanschoo 2y ago
    How can the version of communism one arrives at through a utility-maximizing manner reasoning itself be "utility-destroying"? Surely whatever principles one derives out of of it has more utility than all other alternatives. Unless you are being facetious in your characterization.
  • yboris 2y ago
    I'm baffled by your claim about Effective Altruism (EA): "fruitless hyper-rationality (think contemporary Effective Altruism)." Fruitless? You mean the (movement of) people who have contributed billions of dollars to some of the most cost-effective charities on the planet; many of who give at least 10% of their income to such charities ... fruitless? How did you form your opinions about EA?
• grakker 2y ago
  I developed my own internal system of values or ethics when I was in high school. I thought it was great. Then I went to University, read Hume, Mill, et al. and realized that my thoughts were not original at all. That didn't make them less relevant, just made me a little disappointed. I spent a disillusioned year or two thinking University was just going to be giving proper names to thoughts I'd already pondered.
• jfengel 2y ago
  I don't particularly care for utilitarianism. It can make the fairly obvious cases rigorous, but it doesn't do a good job of drawing fine distinctions -- for example, the variations of the Trolley Problem. When two utilitarians disagree in their cost/benefit function, utilitarianism doesn't provide a mechanism to resolve it. That's not meant to discourage anybody from utilitarianism. There is no obviously better system. And we do need some basis on which to make decisions. I am just wary of utilitarianism for myself because I distrust its potentially confident-but-wrong conclusions. I do think it's a very useful framework for elucidating the problems. Why is it we are willing to pull a lever to let the train kill one person, but unwilling to push a fat guy in front of it? I think that utilitarianism highlights the differences for exploring the moral intuition. I have a poorly-elaborated notion that the moral intuition has some kind of universal, biological basis -- perhaps similar in origin to Chomsky's Universal Grammar. If that's true, we might be able to learn something from the neurobiology of moral decision-making. And that might in turn put utilitarianism on a firmer footing, or prove that no such footing is possible. Just my $.02.