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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
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What buybuy said. Plus... Moralps are possibly hypocritical, but it could be that they are just wrong, claiming one preference but acting as if they have another. If I claim that I would never prefer a child to die so that I can buy a new car, and I then buy a new car instead of sending my money to feed starving children in wherever, then I am effectively making incorrect statements about my preferences, OR I am using the word preferences in a way that renders it uninteresting. Preferences are worth talking about precisely because to the extent that they describe what people will actually do.
I suspect in the case of starving children and cars, my ACTUAL preference is much more sentimental and much less universal. If I came home one day and laying on my lawn was a starving child, I would very likely feed that child even if this food came from a store I was keeping to trade for a new car. But if this child is around the corner and out of my sight, then its Tesla S time!
So Moralps are possibly hypocritical, but certainly wrong at describing their own preferences, IF we insist that preferences are things that dictate our volition.
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.
Your comment reads to me like a perfect description of hypocrisy. Am I missing something?
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.