Virtue Ethics is like weightlifting. You gotta hit the gym if you want strong muscles. You gotta throw yourself into situations that cultivate virtue if you want to be able to act virtuously.
Consequentialism is like firefighting. You need to set yourself up somewhere with a firetruck and hoses and rebreathers and axes and a bunch of cohorts who are willing to run into a fire with you if you want to put out fires.
You can’t put out fires by weightlifting, but when the time comes to actually rush into a fire, bust through some walls, and drag people out, you really should have been hitting the gym consistently for the past several months.
That’s such a good summary I wish I’d just written that instead of the long shpiel I actually posted.
Thanks for the compliment!
I am currently wracking my brain to come up with a virtue-ethics equivalent to the “bro do you even lift” shorthand—something pithy to remind people that System-1 training is important to people who want their System-1 responses to act in line with their System-2 goals.
Here’s how I think about the distinction on a meta-level:
“It is best to act for the greater good (and acting for the greater good often requires being awesome).”
vs.
“It is best to be an awesome person (and awesome people will consider the greater good).”
where ″acting for the greater good” means “having one’s own utility function in sync with the aggregate utility function of all relevant agents” and “awesome” means “having one’s own terminal goals in sync with ‘deep’ terminal goals (possibly inherent in being whatever one is)” (e.g. Sam Harris/Aristotle-style ‘flourishing’).
I will reframe this to make sure I understand it:
Virtue Ethics is like weightlifting. You gotta hit the gym if you want strong muscles. You gotta throw yourself into situations that cultivate virtue if you want to be able to act virtuously.
Consequentialism is like firefighting. You need to set yourself up somewhere with a firetruck and hoses and rebreathers and axes and a bunch of cohorts who are willing to run into a fire with you if you want to put out fires.
You can’t put out fires by weightlifting, but when the time comes to actually rush into a fire, bust through some walls, and drag people out, you really should have been hitting the gym consistently for the past several months.
That’s such a good summary I wish I’d just written that instead of the long shpiel I actually posted.
Thanks for the compliment!
I am currently wracking my brain to come up with a virtue-ethics equivalent to the “bro do you even lift” shorthand—something pithy to remind people that System-1 training is important to people who want their System-1 responses to act in line with their System-2 goals.
Rationalists should win?
Maybe with a sidenote how continuously recognizing in detail how you failed to win just now is not winning.
‘Do you even win [bro/sis/sib]?’
How about ‘Train the elephant’?
Here’s how I think about the distinction on a meta-level:
“It is best to act for the greater good (and acting for the greater good often requires being awesome).”
vs.
“It is best to be an awesome person (and awesome people will consider the greater good).”
where ″acting for the greater good” means “having one’s own utility function in sync with the aggregate utility function of all relevant agents” and “awesome” means “having one’s own terminal goals in sync with ‘deep’ terminal goals (possibly inherent in being whatever one is)” (e.g. Sam Harris/Aristotle-style ‘flourishing’).
So arete, then?