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jkaufman comments on Does utilitarianism "require" extreme self sacrifice? If not why do people commonly say it does? - Less Wrong
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Huh? So your view of a moral theory is that it ranks your options, but there's no implication that a moral agent should pick the best known option?
What purpose does such a theory serve? Why would you classify it as a "moral theory" rather than "an interesting numeric excercise"?
An agent should pick the best options they can get themselves to pick. In practice this will not be the ones that maximizes utility as they understand it, but it will be ones with higher utility than if they just did whatever they felt like. And, more strongly, it this gives higher utility than if they tried to do as many good things as possible without prioritizing the really important ones.