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AndHisHorse comments on Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015 - Less Wrong
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But, from the inside, how to you tell the difference between doing actual good for others or being an omnipotent moral busybody?
Willingness to be critiqued? Self-examination and scrupulous quantities of doubt? This seems kind of like the wrong question, actually. "Actual good" is a fuzzy concept, if it even exists at all; a benevolent tyrant cares whether or not they are fulfilling their values (which, presumably, includes "provide others with things I think are good"). The question I would ask is how you tell the difference between actually achieving the manifestation of your values and only making a big show of it; presumably it's the latter that causes the problem (or at least the problem that you care about).
Then again, this comes from a moral non-realist who doesn't see a contradiction in having a moral clause saying it's good to enforce your morality on others to some extent, so your framework's results may vary.
Both of these will help. A lot.
True. One could go with "that which causes the greatest happiness", but one shouldn't be putting mood-controlling chemicals in the water. One could go with "that which best protects human life", but one shouldn't put humanity into a (very safe) zoo where nothing dangerous or interesting can ever happen to them.
This is therefore a major problem for someone actually trying to be a benevolent leader - how to go about it?
I'd suggest having some metric by which your values can be measured, and measuring it on a regular basis. For example, if you think that a benevolent leader would do best by reducing crime, then you can measure that by tracking crime statistics.