I would be interested to hear, from those who regard themselves as very rational and not afraid to boast about it, how confused people are about these issues.

I'm not super rational, but I might as well say... I'm kind of confused about it, but what I've been doing for the last few months seems to be working so far.

Basically, I think that my moral intuitions are pretty solid at telling me which goals are good, but that my default emotions are pretty bad at weighing the relevant considerations, and lead to a large share of my inconsistency.

Lets take the Opium Wars as an (albeit obscure, but IMO very demonstrative) example.

The British wanted lots of Chinese goods, like tea. However, the Chinese didn't really want any British stuff, besides silver. The British didn't want to run out of silver, so they started selling lots of Opium in China. Soon, Opium became a strategic resource (to the point the East India Company conquered more territory to grow more of it) which maintained the balance of trade by keeping portions of the Chinese population addicted.

Eventually, China got annoyed and the Emperor banned Opium sales. So Britain declared war to keep their ports opened. Fighting ensued. People died. The Chinese lost, and Opium continued to be forced through their ports.

Its pretty easy to say that the British Opium-selling companies are evil, but keep in mind that they were still bankrolled by the British Consumer. People died because other people wanted cheaper tea. The whole system took a few less than moral people, and multiplied their actions to be strong enough to force a country to do things.

Lets pretend that I'm living in London back then. I think murder is bad. I like tea, and following economic forces I prefer cheaper tea. So I buy from the East India Trading Company. If I were fully informed, I would probably decide that I don't want to support them. However, my emotions don't make me feel like I'm murdering and pushing drugs on the Chinese when I buy their tea. So I keep doing it.

Even worse, I might (back then) actually just be racist against the Chinese, and consider them subhuman because my emotions make a halo effect around British Civilization, and our inherent superiority to the world. We're helping them! Civilizing the Barbarians! It's the White Man's Burden to help them do reasonable things like trade!