steven0461 comments on Open Thread, January 15-31, 2012 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 16 January 2012 12:56AM

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Comment author: steven0461 22 January 2012 12:46:35AM 0 points [-]

Oh I see, I thought you had some sort of general formula for weighing (naive) consequentialism and deontology. If I had known there were going to be creepy specifics, I wouldn't have asked.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 January 2012 07:57:03AM *  2 points [-]

I assumed 5 or 6 seemed a creepily specific number and thus you wanted specifics. Note that as I said this was pure uninformed speculation. Norway is a partcularly well governed country, and overall specific people tend to in well governed Western states to matter much less here than say in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. However even a marginally better job at governing or crafting laws creates averts a lol of dusts specks.

I usually apply pure consequentalism measuring happy healthy years of life as a first estimate. When actually contemplating real actions to support I go by vritue ethics, since some costs are hard to capture in utilitarian thinking. Following virtue ethics I wouldn't ever support an attempt to assassinate someone unless they where directly responsible for a massive amount of death, as in signing death warrants or conducting killings or hiring thugs. Perhaps controversially I wouldn't put torturing people a ok reason to assassinate since that seems really hard to establish because of propaganda, misninformation, a more convoluted paper trail, ect.