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Dagon comments on Is the average ethical review board ethical from an utilitarian standpoint? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (23)
Ethics boards tend not to be utilitarian (or on many cases, even consequentialist) in their judgements. Many times their rules happen to improve net good, but that's not their goal.
The principle of informed consent stems from a deontological "do no harm" perspective, rather than a balance of value perspective. On the whole, I don't trust anyone to know my utility very well, so this over-caution seems best to me. But it's clearly not optimal from an outside perspective.
Likely, but having a review board may still yield a net utilitarian outcome compared to not having one.
By "net utilitarian outcome" I'm guessing you mean "overall higher utility in the universe". And I agree, it's higher than some alternate universes that don't contain ethics boards. However, it's probably lower than universes with (competent) utilitarian ethics boards. And the last is probably worse than universes with (competent) utilitarian researchers and no need for ethics boards.
It always depends on what you compare it against.