Yummyfajitas seems to be using utilitarian morality in his argument, not ejecting it altogether. That's what the concern with the net number of people harmed would suggest anyway.
Not really. It looks like utilitarian morality on the surface, but it lacks a rigorous analysis of consequences (as I pointed out on at least two fronts). Utilitarian morality's bootstrap definition requires rigor in order to use it - otherwise, there's a real danger of arriving at an immoral conclusion, which means it's not utilitarian.
Putting a pig in a suit doesn't make it a gentleman.
Which gets back to Occam's Razor. Which is more likely... that this was a failure of insufficient rigor, or that it was using utilitarianism and math to appeal to authority? Given that there were multiple violations of rigor, Occam's Razor suggests that this wasn't utilitarian morality at all, but rather mere defensive rhetoric.
Of course, this doesn't imply intent - the author might not realize that his formal-sounding justification was actually rationalization, because of a failure to understand the underlying moral issue. Which is exactly how bias works in most cases.
Someone put it really well recently, in the context of racism and racist police behavior. They said racism isn't waving a Confederate flag around. Racism is looking for excuses every time the police shoot another unarmed black man. People who don't think of themselves as racist or sexist, who actually find those ideas repulsive, are actively racist and sexist all the time! This is because they don't see the bias in their own behavior.
Putting a pig in a suit doesn't make it a gentleman.
Which gets back to Occam's Razor. Which is more likely... that this was a failure of insufficient rigor, or that it was using utilitarianism and math to appeal to authority? Given that there were multiple violations of rigor, Occam's Razor suggests that this wasn't utilitarian morality at all, but rather mere defensive rhetoric.
Of course, this doesn't imply intent - the author might not realize that his formal-sounding justification was actually rationalization, because of a failure to understand the underlying moral issue. Which is exactly how bias works in most cases.
Someone put it really well recently, in the context of racism and racist police behavior. They said racism isn't waving a Confederate flag around. Racism is looking for excuses every time the police shoot another unarmed black man. People who don't think of themselves as racist or sexist, who actually find those ideas repulsive, are actively racist and sexist all the time! This is because they don't see the bias in their own behavior.