CarlShulman comments on A (small) critique of total utilitarianism - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 26 June 2012 12:36PM

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Comment author: CarlShulman 29 June 2012 09:25:37AM *  7 points [-]

My whole point in the comments on this post has been that it's a pernicious practice to use such false examples. They leave erroneous impressions and associations. A world where bank-robbery is super-profitable, so profitable as to outweigh the effects of reputation and the like, is not very coherent.

A better example would be something like: "would utilitarians support raising taxes to fund malaria eradication," or "would a utilitarian who somehow inherited swoopo.com (a dollar auction site) shut down the site or use the revenue to save kids from malaria" or "if a utilitarian inherited the throne in a monarchy like Oman (without the consent of the people) would he spend tax revenues on international good causes or return them to the taxpayers?"