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MixedNuts comments on [study] Ego depletion might disappear with age - Less Wrong
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I wonder if the old fogeys are running on autopilot.
Possibly they have trained their autopilots to work really well, freeing effort for rare tasks. Young 'uns have crappy autopilots so they need to switch to manual and reprogram the autopilot all the time. </virtue ethicist>
What's that got to do with virtue ethics?
If I understand virtue ethics correctly, which I don't, virtue ethicists want to have good autopilots. They don't give themselves much credit for doing good things, except inasmuch as it shows they do them and makes them more likely to continue to do so. Likewise, they don't do slightly bad things, because that would condition them to do bad things in other circumstances.
"Habituate yourself to the mean."
I think a more distinctly virtue ethicist way of putting it is that they don't do slightly bad things because that would condition them to have bad dispositions, or to be bad people, something that is intrinsically disvaluable.
People who avoid doing slightly bad things to prevent instilling unhelpful habits, and to prevent themselves from bringing about future harm are (roughly) global utilitarians.
I'm such a utilitarian, I don't understand the difference. What's a bad person with bad dispositions, if not someone who does bad things?
Well, in practice most of us do make these sorts of judgments. We don't think a bad person stops being a bad person when we imprison them, for example, even if they are thereafter unable to do bad things and therefore don't. Which suggests that we have some notion of a bad person who isn't doing bad things.
This may not be justified, but I'd be very surprised if it were so alien to you that you don't understand it.