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BerryPick6 comments on Ritual 2012: A Moment of Darkness - Less Wrong
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I agree that "whether polyamory (or cryonics, or whatever) is a good thing" is a thing we want to know. Possibly even the thing we really want to know, as you suggest.
When you unpack the question in terms of improving lives, benefiting people, etc. you're implicitly adopting a consequentialist stance, where "is polyamory a good thing" equates to "does polyamory have the highest expected value"? I endorse this completely.
In my experience, it has a high positive expected value for some people and a high negative expected value for others, and the highest EV strategy is figure out which sort of person I am and act accordingly.
This is very similar to asking whether a homosexual sex life has the highest expected value, actually, or (equivalently) whether a homosexual sex life is a good thing: it definitely is for some people, and definitely is not for others, and the highest-EV strategy is to pick a sex life that corresponds to the sort of person I am.
All of that said, I do think there's a difference here between unpacking "is polyamory a good thing?" as "does polyamory has the highest expected value?" (the consequentialist stance) and unpacking it as "is polyamory the a characteristic practice of virtuous people?" (the virtue-ethicist stance).
Perhaps what I mean, when I talk about markers of virtue, is that this community seems to be adopting a virtue-ethics rather than a consequentialist stance on the subject.
I know how a consequentialist (at least, one operating with the intention of maximizing 'human values') would unpack these questions, and I know how we could theoretically look at facts and give answers to ze's questions.
But how, on earth, would "is polyamory the characteristic of virtuous people" get unpacked? What does "virtuous" mean here and what would it look like for something or someone to be "virtuous"?
I know you probably didn't mean to get dragged into a conversation about Virtue Ethics, but I've seen it mentioned on LW a few times and have always been very curious about its local version.
Well, not being a virtue ethicist myself, I'm probably not the best guy to ask.
My question for virtue ethicists is "well, OK, but how do you tell who is virtuous?"
Then again, a virtue ethicist can just as reasonably ask "well, OK, but how do you tell what consequences are desirable?" to which I, as a consequentialist, essentially reply "I consult my intuitions about value." Life has more value than death, joy has more value than suffering, growth has more value than stagnation, and so forth. How do I know that? Geez, I dunno. I just know.
Presumably a virtue ethicist can just as readily reply "I consult my intuitions about virtue." I suppose it's no less reasonable.