Is it fine to upset one person for the entertainment of others according to your personal flavour of utilitarianism? (to the point of depression but not suicide, while entertaining enough other people to be generating more ‘good’ feelings than ‘bad’)
I’m not a utilitarian, but according to standard utilitarianism (as opposed to LW usage, which usually just means “consequentalism”), if it benefits people to a greater degree than it hurts them, then it is a good action.
Yes, I am asking because my suspicion is that many people who label themselves as utilitarian evaluate a situation like this one using deontology-like rules and not utility calculations and was curious if this is the case.
Is it fine to upset one person for the entertainment of others according to your personal flavour of utilitarianism? (to the point of depression but not suicide, while entertaining enough other people to be generating more ‘good’ feelings than ‘bad’)
Any given example is fine but a meta rule against this sort of thing is probably more stable.
I’m not a utilitarian, but according to standard utilitarianism (as opposed to LW usage, which usually just means “consequentalism”), if it benefits people to a greater degree than it hurts them, then it is a good action.
Yes, I am asking because my suspicion is that many people who label themselves as utilitarian evaluate a situation like this one using deontology-like rules and not utility calculations and was curious if this is the case.
I’m not a deontologist either. I’m an egoist. I do use utility calculations, but I seek to maximize my own utility, not the world’s.