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DanielFilan comments on Does utilitarianism "require" extreme self sacrifice? If not why do people commonly say it does? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (99)
"Utilitarianism" for many people includes a few beliefs that add up to this requirement.
Item 3 implies that movement of wealth from someone who has more to someone who has less increases total utility. #1 means that this includes your wealth. #2 means it's obligatory.
Note that I'm not a utilitarian, and I don't believe #1 or #2. Anyone who actually does believe these, please feel free to correct me or rephrase to be more accurate.
I know of many people who endorse claims 1 and 3. But I know of no one who claims to believe 2. Am I just misinformed about people's beliefs? Lesswrong is well known for being connected to utilitarianism. Do any prominent lesswrongers explicitly endorse 2?
edit:
My point was I know many people who endorse something like the view in this comment:
2') One decision is morally better than another if it yields greater expected total utility.
I claim to believe 2! I think that we do have lots of moral obligations, and basically nobody is satisfying all of them. It probably isn't helpful to berate people for not meeting all of their moral obligations (since it's really really hard to do so, and berating people isn't likely to help), and that there is room to do better and worse even when we don't meet our moral obligations, but neither of these facts mean that we don't have a moral obligation to maximise expected moral-utility.