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mwengler comments on Does utilitarianism "require" extreme self sacrifice? If not why do people commonly say it does? - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: Princess_Stargirl 09 December 2014 08:32AM

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Comment author: gjm 12 December 2014 03:39:00PM 0 points [-]

Preferences of this sort might be interesting not because they describe what their holders will do themselves, but because they describe what their holders will try to get other people to do. I might think that diverting funds from luxury purchases to starving Africans is always morally good but not care enough (or not have enough moral backbone, or whatever) to divert much of my own money that way -- but I might e.g. consistently vote for politicians who do, or choose friends who do, or argue for doing it, or something.

Comment author: mwengler 12 December 2014 05:40:35PM 0 points [-]

Your comment reads to me like a perfect description of hypocrisy. Am I missing something?

Comment author: gjm 12 December 2014 05:44:42PM 2 points [-]

Nope. Real human beings are hypocrites, to some extent, pretty much all the time.

But holding a moral value and being hypocritical about it is different from not holding it at all, so I don't think it's correct to say that moral values held hypocritically are uninteresting or meaningless or anything like that.