PS: have you considered the virtue ethics approach? I.e. ‘do what a person who
was like X would do’ or ‘act like the generous man would act’ etc.
Now /there/ is an easily-remembered heuristic, which is fairly easy to think of in the heat of the moment, and which I hadn’t consciously considered at all. I’m definitely going to add this one to my set for comparison with the others.
The trickiest part would seem to be selecting an appropriate role-model, or at least a decent archetype. Even if the person being used for comparison is fictional, such as HPMOR’s Rationalist!Harry, or even if it’s meta-fictional, such as GrownUp!Rationalist!Harry, I don’ t think the standard LessWrong advice against generalizing from fictional evidence would apply—in this case, we wouldn’t be trying to construct a model of reality from evidence that didn’t actually happen, we’d be constructing a model of ethical behaviour, a rather different sort of thing.
Agreed: my take on virtue ethics would be that you are following your image of ‘the good man’, not trying to find out empirically what some specific good man did. So people can ask ‘What would Jesus do?’ and if they found out Jesus was actually really mean it shouldn’t change their ethics. For what it’s worth, I think Aristotle and Hume are both genuinely worth reading on this sort of thing: they’ve got some very useful folk-psychology insights. Though anyone who’s seen how much this community uses the essentially Aristotelean concept of akrasia shouldn’t be too surprised by that.
Another slightly differnt take (don’t know if it’s been identiied and named in academic philosophy) is the principle of transparency/scrutiny. The idea ‘assume you’re being watched’ obviously exists in lots of religious contexts and can come in neurotic forms. But the principle that you should act as if all your actions are open to scrutiny has been suggested by various people (Zen teachers and Stoics amongst them, I think), and has some merit.
Professionally, as a civil servant, I actually rely to some degree on this. The fundamental codes of good practice when dealing with external bodies (papers, powerful trade bodies, political groups, the public...) are often best delivered not through attention to the minutae but by asking ‘how would this look if it was subject to a Freedom of Information request?’ Similarly, you can shortcut internalised excuses about a convenient decision that you know isn’t really justified if you ask the question ‘What would happen if this went to judicial review?’
The benefit of this approach is that it’s not only a rule of thumb you can apply at the time, but a pricniple you can develop by logging when you’ve been uncertain of how to act and making a habit of actually opening the decision to scrutiny by others (a trusted friend, a rationalist community...) Knowing that it will be actually scrutinised makes it harder to try to push through a decision in your own mind, ignoring the objections that arise. It might also make it easier to take decisions that seem dubious but you truly believe are justified.
PS: I first thought of the actualy scrutiny idea in quasi-ethical contexts of personal goals. Decisions on whether a strict revision routine or diet can be interrupted by the exceptional circumstances of the Best Party Ever or the birthday cake your loving mother just made are not reliably made by the motivated individual involved. Submitting to external judgement on what’s justified would lead most people to a more realistic assessment of what’s a good reason and what’s just an excuse.
Now /there/ is an easily-remembered heuristic, which is fairly easy to think of in the heat of the moment, and which I hadn’t consciously considered at all. I’m definitely going to add this one to my set for comparison with the others.
The trickiest part would seem to be selecting an appropriate role-model, or at least a decent archetype. Even if the person being used for comparison is fictional, such as HPMOR’s Rationalist!Harry, or even if it’s meta-fictional, such as GrownUp!Rationalist!Harry, I don’ t think the standard LessWrong advice against generalizing from fictional evidence would apply—in this case, we wouldn’t be trying to construct a model of reality from evidence that didn’t actually happen, we’d be constructing a model of ethical behaviour, a rather different sort of thing.
Agreed: my take on virtue ethics would be that you are following your image of ‘the good man’, not trying to find out empirically what some specific good man did. So people can ask ‘What would Jesus do?’ and if they found out Jesus was actually really mean it shouldn’t change their ethics. For what it’s worth, I think Aristotle and Hume are both genuinely worth reading on this sort of thing: they’ve got some very useful folk-psychology insights. Though anyone who’s seen how much this community uses the essentially Aristotelean concept of akrasia shouldn’t be too surprised by that.
Another slightly differnt take (don’t know if it’s been identiied and named in academic philosophy) is the principle of transparency/scrutiny. The idea ‘assume you’re being watched’ obviously exists in lots of religious contexts and can come in neurotic forms. But the principle that you should act as if all your actions are open to scrutiny has been suggested by various people (Zen teachers and Stoics amongst them, I think), and has some merit.
Professionally, as a civil servant, I actually rely to some degree on this. The fundamental codes of good practice when dealing with external bodies (papers, powerful trade bodies, political groups, the public...) are often best delivered not through attention to the minutae but by asking ‘how would this look if it was subject to a Freedom of Information request?’ Similarly, you can shortcut internalised excuses about a convenient decision that you know isn’t really justified if you ask the question ‘What would happen if this went to judicial review?’
The benefit of this approach is that it’s not only a rule of thumb you can apply at the time, but a pricniple you can develop by logging when you’ve been uncertain of how to act and making a habit of actually opening the decision to scrutiny by others (a trusted friend, a rationalist community...) Knowing that it will be actually scrutinised makes it harder to try to push through a decision in your own mind, ignoring the objections that arise. It might also make it easier to take decisions that seem dubious but you truly believe are justified.
PS: I first thought of the actualy scrutiny idea in quasi-ethical contexts of personal goals. Decisions on whether a strict revision routine or diet can be interrupted by the exceptional circumstances of the Best Party Ever or the birthday cake your loving mother just made are not reliably made by the motivated individual involved. Submitting to external judgement on what’s justified would lead most people to a more realistic assessment of what’s a good reason and what’s just an excuse.