Clay_H.
6
2
Clay_H. has not written any posts yet.
Your deontological ethics are tiresome. Why not just be a utilitarian and lie your way to a better tomorrow?
Put more seriously, I would think that being believed to put the welfare of humanity ahead of concerns about personal integrity could have significant advantages itself.
Or put another way, when it's time to shut up and do the impossible (save humanity, say), that doesn't seem like a good time to defer to pre-established theories, of ethics or anything else. Refer, yes; defer, no. You say to beware of cleverness, be wary of thinking you're smarter than your ethics (meaning deontological beliefs and intuitions). That discussion sounded like a Hofstadter's Law... (read more)
While we're on the subject of the Golden Ecumene, I've only read the first book but the major problem I had with it was the egregious violation of your Rule 31 in its twist ending (which frankly seemed tacked-on, as if the publisher had said "Do you think you could turn this book into a trilogy somehow?").