orthonormal comments on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease - Less Wrong

236 Post author: Yvain 30 May 2010 09:16PM

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Comment author: Houshalter 31 May 2010 10:33:07PM *  0 points [-]

Your first sentence is a classic summary of the deontological position. There's nothing on Less Wrong I can think of explaining why most of us wouldn't agree with it, which is a darned shame in my opinion.

Err, maybe "most sacred rights" was the wrong wording. How about "moral values". Same thing, don't get technical.

The part about mass extermination I can talk about more confidently. Consequentialists only do things if the benefits are greater than the cost. Preemptive imprisonment would work if the benefits in lower crime were greater than the very real cost to the imprisoned individual. Mass extermination doesn't leave anyone better off, cause they're all dead, so there's no benefit and a huge cost.

But your assuming that "Mass extermination doesn't leave anyone better off, cause they're all dead". How do you define "better off". Once you can do this, maybe that will make more sense. Oh, by the way, exterminating groups of individuals could make, in certain situations, things "better off". So maybe mass exterminations would have no advantage, but slaughtering that entire mafia family could save us alot of trouble. Then you get back to the "eye for an eye" scenario. Harsher punishments create a greater deterent for the individual and the rest of society. Not to mention that amputations and executions are by far cheaper and easier then prisons.

Comment author: orthonormal 01 June 2010 01:32:37AM *  11 points [-]

Err, maybe "most sacred rights" was the wrong wording. How about "moral values".

This goes deeper than you think. The position we're advocating, in essence, is that

  1. There are no inalienable rights or ontologically basic moral values. Everything we're talking about when we use normative language is a part of us, not a property of the universe as a whole.
  2. This doesn't force us to be nihilists. Even if it's just me that cares about not executing innocent people, I still care about it.
  3. It's really easy to get confused thinking about ethics; it's a slippery problem.
  4. The best way to make sure that more of what we value happens, generally speaking, is some form of consequentialist calculus. (I personally hesitate to call this utilitarianism because that's often thought of as concerned only with whether people are happy, and I care about some other things as well.)
  5. This doesn't mean we should throw out all general rules; some absolute ethical injunctions should be followed even when it "seems like they shouldn't", because of the risk of one's own thought processes being corrupted in typical human ways.
  6. This may sound strange, but in typical situations it all adds up to normality: you won't see a rationalist consequentialist running around offing people because they've calculated them to be net negatives for human values. It can change the usual answers in extreme hypotheticals, in dealing with uncertainty, and in dealing with large numbers; but that's because "common-sense" thinking ends up being practically incoherent in recognizable ways when those variables are added.

I don't expect you to agree with all of this, but I hope you'll give it the benefit of the doubt as something new, which might make sense when discussed further...

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