[astrange]

I think I've seen Mr. ACX say that this is wrong and the right way to do it is to be utilitarian, but just don't try very hard to calculate it ie don't be rational or maximize it.

This is probably correct; if you maximize anything hard enough you'll end up in a logic trap, turn the world into paperclips, and get eaten by a utility monster[0]. That's because rationality doesn't actually work in the real world[1]. Of course, "just don't try hard" isn't going to work for everyone.

I think if you do try to rationalize "utilitarianism but not calculating too hard", you end up at virtue ethics, but ironically I haven't thought about that hard enough to say.

[0] ie you can increase happiness temporarily by giving everyone drugs, they'll just die after

[1] https://metarationality.com, also see Taleb on why you shouldn't always "maximize"

[mst]

A reasonable short (so necessarily lossy) version of what I've ended up believing is:

- policy decisions should be made on a consequentialist basis (which can involve utiliarianism like calculations but is to me most about considering second and third order consequences, with attempts at calculation as merely one mechanism through which to do so)

- personal decisions should be made on a virtue ethics basis

I'm not going to claim this as a Right Answer but this model has proven to be the least wrong / most useful one I've encountered in practice, at least for me.

[telotortium]

IMO that's a very reasonable approach with two caveats:

- Consequentialism has real issues with ethics in the very large to infinite scale (time, numbers of people, etc.). Most theories of ethics have issues in this limit as well, but Macaskill accepts the repugnant conclusion and advocates for "longtermism", which I think is undeveloped in anything more than a vague "we should think about the future" sense.

- It's perfectly valid for a human society to decide to have some non-consequentialist bright lines they won't cross.

[dale_glass]

Why what way, and what do you understand by "virtue ethics"? It doesn't seem to be a very common approach, so I'm not very familiar with it.

[mst]

I ... ok, so the late reply is because I know inside my head what I mean, but expressing it is hard (sorry about that, hopefully you'll see this anyway.)

Virtue ethics is ... about trying to reach for the Good. People of faith regularly have a similar outlook except perhaps without one of the 'o's.

Caring about people in general, trying to be trustworthy, trying to be honourable, trying to look after your friends.

I guess you could say it's characterised by trying to come away from a situation feeling like you've done the morally virtuous thing (I am very aware of the tautology there) rather than necessarily the utility maximising thing.

It's very fuzzy, but also very human, and I'm conscious that I've not given you a solid meta-ethical grounding for it ... but then again, I'm not convinced there -is- one, and yet it seems to work for me.

Sorry for the massive vagueness, but realistically it cashes out to "try to do the right thing", which is necessarily vague and dependent on your own perception of what is morally correct ... which is why it's a terrible way to make policy (IMO) but works well on an individual basis, at least for me.

[dale_glass]

> Virtue ethics is ... about trying to reach for the Good.

I guess the issue I have with virtue ethics in concept is that it's fuzzy enough that I'm not clear on how it sets itself apart against deontology and consequentialism. The way you put it, it seems deontology-lite.

> Caring about people in general, trying to be trustworthy, trying to be honourable, trying to look after your friends.

So it works out to sort of deontology, except less rigid maybe? Rather than a flat command of "tell the truth", you have a fuzzy idea of "try to be trustworthy"?

Do consequences matter? That is, what is important in the end, that you did the work of trying to look after a friend, even if in the end your effort made their lives worse, or whether your friends are happy?

I guess you could say it's characterised by trying to come away from a situation feeling like you've done the morally virtuous thing (I am very aware of the tautology there) rather than necessarily the utility maximising thing.

> I guess you could say it's characterised by trying to come away from a situation feeling like you've done the morally virtuous thing (I am very aware of the tautology there) rather than necessarily the utility maximising thing.

I think any utilitarian has to recognize that utility can't be predicted very far. Eg, the utility of a backup generator is highly dependent on whether you ever end up needing one, which highly depends on the local weather. So it makes no sense to obsess over it like a robot, you can't get there anyway.

The way I see it is that the split is about what matters in the end.

In consequentialist frameworks, it's the consequences. If everyone is happy, then there's no problem to be solved. On the other hand, if something horrible happened when somebody tried their best, they still did a bad thing in the end.

In deontology, it's the reverse. If you followed the rules, your conscience can be clear even if something bad did result. If you didn't, then you failed in your duties even if disaster was averted.

[mst]

Virtue ethics is very fuzzy, yes.

If I can ground why I find it useful at all, it would be in the intuition (and N=1 anecdata) that a heuristic of 'following the rules most of the time will, in fact, produce decent consequences overall.'

Caveats to that:

- I reject deontological absolutism as ridiculous and counterproductive.

- I can't really give you a solid idea of what my version of 'the rules' are and I certainly can't justify them beyond 'they feel right to me.'

With respect to the last part, I try to live by one of the tenets of Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism - "make the best choice you can with the information you have available, and if you did that, your conscience should be clear even if something bad results" with the caveat of "but you should probably still be -annoyed- that you got it wrong, and your conscience should only remain clear if you make an effort to understand how that happened and not repeat the error."

I very much have consequentialist -instincts-, but on a personal level I've effectively derived a form of virtue ethics from those instincts because I find it a more effective way to get an overall net good set of consequences than brute force calculation.

Fundamentally my choice to use of a form of virtue ethics for decision making is instrumental, not epistemic.

An example: as a general rule, lying is bad ... but keeping your mouth shut and/or omitting details is often useful, and I will happily lie to keep somebody's secret (e.g. avoiding outing somebody) both because of the desire to be trustworthy -and- because 'avoiding harm coming to your friends' is a virtue in and of itself.

I'm not sure I've made myself any clearer here.

[pmyteh]

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a characteristically good (and easy to follow) overview:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/

[dale_glass]

That's all well and good, but I'm more interested in the practical example of how this particular person approaches it.

The Stanford Encyclopedia gives several forms for instance. It seems probable any given person will pick one form to subscribe to, and then have some particular interpretation of what that means to them. That's what I'm curious about.