teageegeepea comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - Less Wrong

157 Post author: Yvain 27 August 2012 03:36AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (1742)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: teageegeepea 28 August 2012 04:06:44AM 3 points [-]

The cold hard utilitarian calculus is hard in many cases because it aims to maximize rather than satisfice. In many ways that seems a feature rather than a bug. Deontological ethics tend to rely heavily on the act-omission distinction, which I must admit I would prefer as the bar I have to pass. But if, as Kant suggested, I ask how I would prefer others to behave, I would want them to act to increase utility. From a contractarian perspective, we can indicate to others that we will increase their utility if they increase ours. It's hard to make contracts with beings that don't exist yet, but there can still exist incentives to create them in the case of farm animals now (which I believe are produced through insemination rather than sex in factory farms) or ems in the future.

My preferred approach also includes not bothering to argue with a great many people. The folk activism* of argument is not going to be very effective at changing anything for most people (I definitely include myself in that set). Like Stirner, I instead converse for my own benefit. This actually makes points in disagreement more valuable because it's more likely to tell me something I don't already know. *Yes, I intentionally linked to a post critiquing the actual argument I am relying on.