Nobody actually thought it is net utilitarian benefit to throw people in concentration camps
If we throw the people with undesirable trait X into concentration camps, there will be fewer people with trait X in the future. If trait X is something that tends to contribute to negative utility, e.g., stupidity, propensity to lie, etc., this will increase utility.
nobody really thinks today it is a net utilitarian benefit to put people in prison for doing something where no party was harmed.
If this is meant to be a reference to the war on drugs, then the net benefit is decreasing the availability and social acceptance of http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_western/ drugs and thus the harm to people and society from said drugs. See here for Eliezer’s argument for why “devil’s offers” should not be legal.
Or decrease utility, if the decreased population results in lower utility. Or increase utility less than some alternatives.
Likewise with the other examples; while you can of course assert about any action, no matter how harmful, that it is a net benefit (in a far enough future), trying to achieve a net benefit leads to different actions than trying to achieve the benefit for the sake of the group(s) that you personally belong to, and this difference shows very clearly.
Near as I can tell, this is very similar to the argument I made with some comments about how propensity to fall to said “devil’s offers” was correlated with race.
Under such values you should be increasing the breeding of the desirables in any case.
Eugine, just because you can see how to rationalize any actions with net benefit in the glorious future, does not mean that people who did those actions actually rationalized them in such a way. It is actually very uncommon to derive actions from the idea of the future good.
If we throw the people with undesirable trait X into concentration camps, there will be fewer people with trait X in the future. If trait X is something that tends to contribute to negative utility, e.g., stupidity, propensity to lie, etc., this will increase utility.
If this is meant to be a reference to the war on drugs, then the net benefit is decreasing the availability and social acceptance of http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_western/ drugs and thus the harm to people and society from said drugs. See here for Eliezer’s argument for why “devil’s offers” should not be legal.
Or decrease utility, if the decreased population results in lower utility. Or increase utility less than some alternatives.
Likewise with the other examples; while you can of course assert about any action, no matter how harmful, that it is a net benefit (in a far enough future), trying to achieve a net benefit leads to different actions than trying to achieve the benefit for the sake of the group(s) that you personally belong to, and this difference shows very clearly.
BTW, I at least partially agree with the argument against of drug legalization.
The arguments that were originally used are what I refer to, not really the recent debates where old choices are rationalized on different grounds.
Near as I can tell, this is very similar to the argument I made with some comments about how propensity to fall to said “devil’s offers” was correlated with race.
Make up the difference by increasing the breeding of the desirables.
Under such values you should be increasing the breeding of the desirables in any case.
Eugine, just because you can see how to rationalize any actions with net benefit in the glorious future, does not mean that people who did those actions actually rationalized them in such a way. It is actually very uncommon to derive actions from the idea of the future good.