Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Indeed, this seems to be an area where the legal system opts for a consequentialist approach; no surprise, then, that you would find it weird.
Um, I thought consequentialism was about evaluating the goodness of a course of action based on its probable consequences. If all it amounts to is hindsight then it's not much use for making ethical decisions about future actions. But I think that would be a straw man.
If you apply that crazy approach to consequentialism then I should be allowed to stand on a roof heaving bricks out into the street, and I'm not doing anything wrong unless and until one of them actually hits somebody.