This is a linkpost for http://putanumonit.com/2016/10/06/theory-of-an-immoral-sentiment/
You are misreading Jacobian
Plausible guess, but actually my error was different: I hadn't noticed the bit of Jacobian's comment you quote there; I read what you wrote and made the mistake of assuming it was correct.
Those words "once you've decided on a course of action" were your words. I just quoted them. It does indeed appear that they don't quite correspond to what Jacobian wrote, and I should have spotted that, but the original misrepresentation of Jacobian's position was yours rather than mine.
(But I should make clear that you misrepresented Jacobian's position by making it look less unreasonable and less easy for you to attack, so there's something highly creditable about that.)
I am afraid I cannot claim here any particularly noble motives.
In Jacobian's text there are, basically, two decision points: the first one is deciding to do good, and the second one is deciding on a course of action. You lose empathy in between them. There are (at least) two ways to interpret this. In one when you decide "do good", you make just a very generic decision to do some unspecified good. All the actual choices are at the "course of action" point. In another one at the first decision point you already decide what particular goo...