Surely a consequentialist could come to a conclusion about book-burning being bad and then write an outraged comment about it—the potential negatives in the long-term of the burning of such a library are debatable but the potential positives in the long-term are AFAICT non-existent. Such a catastrophic failure of cost-benefit analysis would be something a consequentialist could in fact be quite outraged about.
Incidentally,
Compared to other events of the time, piddling for human “utility.”
...it seems self-evident to me that this is not in any way an interesting or meaningful comparison to ask people to make (ETA: in light of the above, anyway). It’s “good” rhetoric but seems to be abysmal rationality; it’s a “there are starving children in Africa, eat your peas” argument.
Surely a consequentialist could come to a conclusion about book-burning being bad and then write an outraged comment about it—the potential negatives in the long-term of the burning of such a library are debatable but the potential positives in the long-term are AFAICT non-existent. Such a catastrophic failure of cost-benefit analysis would be something a consequentialist could in fact be quite outraged about.
Incidentally,
...it seems self-evident to me that this is not in any way an interesting or meaningful comparison to ask people to make (ETA: in light of the above, anyway). It’s “good” rhetoric but seems to be abysmal rationality; it’s a “there are starving children in Africa, eat your peas” argument.