But in fact, there's going to be plenty of hurting in any realistic human society. Attempts to argue in favor of an ideology because it has a vision for minimizing (or even eliminating) hurting get into all the usual problems with utilitarianism and social engineering schemes, both theoretical and practical
This is an invalid objection. Hurting people is bad; therefore, we want to minimize hurting people. Saying "but you can't bring hurt down to zero" is an invalid objection because it is irrelevant, and a pernicious one, because people use that form of objection routinely to defend their special interests at the cost of social welfare.
Also, referring to the "usual problems with utilitarianism and social engineering" literally says that there are problems with utilitarianism and social engineering (which is true), but falsely implies that (a) utilitarianism has more or even as many problems as any other approach, and (b) that attempting to optimize for something is more like "social engineering" than other alternatives.
Saying "but you can't bring hurt down to zero" is an invalid objection because it is irrelevant, and a pernicious one, because people use that form of objection routinely to defend their special interests at the cost of social welfare.
You speak of "social welfare" as if it were an objectively measurable property of the real world. In reality, there is no such thing as an objective social welfare function, and ideologically convenient definitions of it are dime a dozen. (And even if such a definition could be agreed upon, there is st...
I'd like to see book reviews of books of interest to LW. Some suggestions:
ADDED: I don't mean I'd like to see reviews in this thread. I'd like each review to have its own thread. In discussion or on the "new" page is up to you.