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Dagon comments on Does utilitarianism "require" extreme self sacrifice? If not why do people commonly say it does? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Well, for one thing, if I'm unwilling to sign up for more than N personal inconvenience in exchange for improving the world, such a theory lets me take the set of interventions that cost me N or less inconvenience and rank them by how much they improve the world, and pick the best one. (Or, in practice, to approximate that as well as I can.) Without such a theory, I can't do that. That sure does sound like the sort of work I'd want a moral theory to do.
Okay, but it sounds like either the theory is quite incomplete, or your limit of N is counter to your moral beliefs. What do you use to decide that world utility would not be improved by N+1 personal inconvenience, or to decide that you don't care about the world as much as yourself?
I don't need a theory to decide I'm unwilling to sign up for more than N personal inconvenience; I can observe it as an experimental result.
Yes, both of those seem fairly likely.
It sounds like you're suggesting that only a complete moral theory serves any purpose, and that I am in reality internally consistent... have I understood you correctly? If so, can you say more about why you believe those things?