ChaosMote comments on Does utilitarianism "require" extreme self sacrifice? If not why do people commonly say it does? - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Princess_Stargirl 09 December 2014 08:32AM

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Comment author: Dagon 09 December 2014 07:52:46PM 4 points [-]

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"?

Comment author: ChaosMote 14 December 2014 03:52:01AM 0 points [-]

Such a moral theory can be used as one of the criterion in a multi-criterion decision system. This is useful because in general people prefer being more moral to being less moral, but not to the exclusion of everything else. For example, one might genuinely want to improve the work and yet be unwilling to make life-altering changes (like donating all but the bare minimum to charity) to further this goal.