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nyan_sandwich comments on Morality is Awesome - Less Wrong
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This one is actually really subtle, and I forget the solution, and it's in the metaethics sequence somewhere (look for pebblesorters), but the punchline is that the outcome sucks.
So yes, you and your Diabolus-1 "win", but the outcome still sucks.
Sure, but... okay, I'm going to go concrete here.
I suffered a lot of abuse as a child; as a result, sometimes my mind enters a state where its adopted optimization process is "maximize suck". In this state, I tend to be MORE rational about my goals than I am when I'm in a more 'positive' state.
So I don't have to stretch very far to imagine a situation where the outcome sucking - MAZIMALLY sucking - is the damned POINT. Because fuck you (and fuck me too).
So the outcome still sucks, if you are not maximizing actual awesomeness.
Not necessarily. Plenty of people think the Saw films are awesome. Plenty of people on 4chan think that posting flashing images to epileptic support boards is awesome, and pushing developmentally disabled children to commit suicide and then harassing their parents forever with pictures of the suicide is awesome.
They will, in fact, use "awesome" explicitly to describe what they're doing.
I thought the first Saw film was awesome. It was a cool gory story about making the most of life. It's fiction, so nobody actually got hurt and there is no secondary consideration of awesomeness there.
Some people think that the prospect of making disabled kids commit suicide is awesome; fewer people think that actually doing so is awesome. I don't think that people who actually do so are awesome.
I think that's a relatively standard use of "awesome".
Much for the same reasons that people can be mistaken about their own desires, people can be mistaken about what they would actually consider awesome if they were to engage in an accurate modeling of all the facts. E.g. People who post flashing images to epileptic boards or suicide pictures to battered parents are either 1) failing to truly envision the potential results of their actions and consequently overvaluing the immediate minor awesomeness of the irony of the post or whatever vs. the distant, unseen, major anti-awesomeness of seizures/suicides, or 2) they’re actually socio- or psychopaths. Given the infrequency of real sociopathy, it’s safe to assume a lot of the former happens, especially over the impersonal, empathy-sapping environment of the Internet.
The answer you are referrign to is probably the utiiitarian one that you morally-should maximisie everyone's preferences, not just your own. But that's already going well beyond to the naive "awesomeness" theory presented above.