Constant comments on Human errors, human values - Less Wrong

32 Post author: PhilGoetz 09 April 2011 02:50AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 09 April 2011 05:02:51PM 3 points [-]

You stated a problem: how to get people to agree. You gave your solution to the problem here (my emphasis)

Personally, I think a reasonable first step is to try to restrict ethics to utilitarian approaches. We'll never reach agreement as long as there are people still trying to use rule-based ethics (such as the "double effect" rule). The difficulty of getting most people to agree that there are no valid non-utilitarian ethical frameworks is just a small fraction of the difficulty of the entire program of agreeing on human values.

I pointed out, however, that it is apparently utilitarianism that has introduced the disagreement in the first place. I explained why that seems to be so. So the problem may be utilitarianism. If so, then the solution is to reject it.