I don’t agree. LW takes a microeconomics viewpoint of decision theory and this implicitly involves maximizing some weighted average of everyone’s utility function.
At some point we really need to come up with more words for this stuff so that the whole consequentialism/hedonic-utilitarianism/etc. confusion doesn’t keep coming up.
To the extent that lesswrong has an official ethical system, that system is utilitiarianism with “the fulfillment of complex human values” as a suggested maximand rather than hedons
Huh, I’m not sure actually, I had been thinking of consequentialism as being the general class of ethical theories based on caring about the state of the world, and that it’s utilitarianism when you try to maximize some definition of utility (which could be human value-fulfillment if you tried to reason about it quantitatively). If my usages are unusual I more or less inherited them from the consequentialism faq I think
If you mean Yvain’s, while his stuff is in general excellent, I recommend learning about philosophical nomenclature from actual philosophers, not medics.
To the extent that lesswrong has an official ethical system, that system is definitely not utilitarianism.
I don’t agree. LW takes a microeconomics viewpoint of decision theory and this implicitly involves maximizing some weighted average of everyone’s utility function.
At some point we really need to come up with more words for this stuff so that the whole consequentialism/hedonic-utilitarianism/etc. confusion doesn’t keep coming up.
To the extent that lesswrong has an official ethical system, that system is utilitiarianism with “the fulfillment of complex human values” as a suggested maximand rather than hedons
That would normally be referred to as consequentialism, not utilitarianism.
Huh, I’m not sure actually, I had been thinking of consequentialism as being the general class of ethical theories based on caring about the state of the world, and that it’s utilitarianism when you try to maximize some definition of utility (which could be human value-fulfillment if you tried to reason about it quantitatively). If my usages are unusual I more or less inherited them from the consequentialism faq I think
If you mean Yvain’s, while his stuff is in general excellent, I recommend learning about philosophical nomenclature from actual philosophers, not medics.