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by samd 5632 days ago
The objection is he making is essentially the objection a rule-consequentialist would make. Which is that although in this particular situation it would produce better consequences to kill the innocent man and save the 5 people, overall it would produce worse consequences if everyone followed the rule that killing innocent people is an acceptable means to some end.
1 comments
JoachimSchipper 5632 days ago
I think it's a bit more subtle than that, although he does point out the danger of imitators. See my reply at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2088562.
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samd 5630 days ago
I'm not sure.

Here is the rule: "Do no harm."

Why should we follow it?

A rule-consequentialist would say, "Because if everyone followed that rule all the time it would lead to better consequences, on average, than if people tried to calculate the consequences of each individual action and act to maximize them."

Why would that lead to better consequences?

A rule-consequentialist could say, "Because people are quite bad at calculating consequences, especially in the tumultuous time before making a critical ethical decision. While we have had the time to think and properly calculate the hypothetical consequences of everyone following the rule."

I think that's exactly the argument Eliezer is making.

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JoachimSchipper 5630 days ago
Put like that, I agree - I had a different meaning of "rule-consequentialist" in mind than you, apparently. (I'm not too familiar with the vocabulary of such discussions, sorry!) Thanks for clarifying.
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samd 5630 days ago
Don't worry, like any academic field philosophy is filled with jargon, but knowing the jargon doesn't make you any smarter and not knowing doesn't make you any dumber.

Both you and Eliezer made good arguments and points, they just happened to already have a name in the philosophical jargon.

If you're interested, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at plato.stanford.edu is the greatest repository of philosophical knowledge on the Internet.

They have an article about rule-consequentialism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism-rule/

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