Silas comments on The Meaning of Right - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 July 2008 01:28AM

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Comment author: Silas 29 July 2008 06:03:00PM 0 points [-]

Matt Simpson: Many an experiment has been thought for the sole purpose of showing how utilitarianism is in direct conflict with our moral intuitions.

I disagree, or you're referring to something I haven't heard of. If I know what you mean here, those are a species of strawman ("act") utilitarianism that doesn't account for the long-term impact and adjustment of behavior that results.

(I'm going to stop giving the caveats; just remember that I accept the possibility you're referring to something else.)

For example, if you're thinking about cases where people would be against a doctor deciding to carve up a healthy patient against his will to save ~40 others, that's not rejection of utilitarianism. It can be recognition that once a doctor does that, people will avoid them in droves, driving up risks all around.

Or, if you're referring to the case of how people would e.g. refuse to divert a train's path so it hits one person instead of five, that's not necessarily an anti-utilitarian intuition; there are many factors at play in such a scenario. For example, the one person may be standing in a normally safe spot and so consented to a lower level of risk, and so by diverting the train, you screw up the ability of people to see what's really safe, etc.