Yes. “Good” can mean desirable outcomes, or responsible decision making. The first obviously matches consequentialism. It appears not to be obvious to Lesswrongians that the second matches deontology. When we judge whether someone behaved culpably or not, we want to know whether they applied the rules and heuristic appropriate to their reference class (doctor, CEO, ships captain...). The consequences of their decision may have landed them in a tribunal, but we don’t hold people to blame for applying the rules and getting the wrong results.
Perhaps I have misunderstood consequentialism and deontology, but my impression was that (many forms of) consequentialism prefers that people optimize expected utility, while deontology does not (it would consider other things, like ‘not lying’, as considerably more important). My impression was that this was basically the main differentiating factor.
Agree about the tribunal situation. From a consequentialist viewpoint it would seem like we would want to judge people formally (in tribunals) according to how well they made an expected value decision, rather than on the outcome. For one, because otherwise we would have a lot more court cases (anything causally linked to a crime is responsible)
You need rules and heuristics to calculate expected value. How does that differ from deontology? The rules are not absolutes? But then it is still a compromise between D and C.
Yes. “Good” can mean desirable outcomes, or responsible decision making. The first obviously matches consequentialism. It appears not to be obvious to Lesswrongians that the second matches deontology. When we judge whether someone behaved culpably or not, we want to know whether they applied the rules and heuristic appropriate to their reference class (doctor, CEO, ships captain...). The consequences of their decision may have landed them in a tribunal, but we don’t hold people to blame for applying the rules and getting the wrong results.
Perhaps I have misunderstood consequentialism and deontology, but my impression was that (many forms of) consequentialism prefers that people optimize expected utility, while deontology does not (it would consider other things, like ‘not lying’, as considerably more important). My impression was that this was basically the main differentiating factor.
Agree about the tribunal situation. From a consequentialist viewpoint it would seem like we would want to judge people formally (in tribunals) according to how well they made an expected value decision, rather than on the outcome. For one, because otherwise we would have a lot more court cases (anything causally linked to a crime is responsible)
You need rules and heuristics to calculate expected value. How does that differ from deontology? The rules are not absolutes? But then it is still a compromise between D and C.