Thus Nietzsche thinks utilitarians are committed to ensuring the survival and happiness of human beings, yet they fail to grasp the unsavory consequences which that commitment may entail. In particular, utilitarians tend to ignore the fact that effective long-run utility promotion might require the forcible destruction of people who either enfeeble the gene pool or who have trouble converting resources into utility—incurable depressives, the severely handicapped, and exceptionally fastidious people all seem potential targets.
Why wouldn’t utilitarianism just weigh the human costs of those measures against proposed benefit of “improving the gene pool” and alternative possible remedies, like anything else?
Probably because from the outset, only one sort of answer is inside the realm of acceptable answers. Anything else would be far outside the Overton window. If they already know what sort of answer they have to produce, doing the actual calculations has no benefit. It’s like a theologian evaluating arguments about the existence of God.
Ok, then that sounds like a criticism of utilitarians, or maybe people, and not utilitarianism. Also, my point didn’t even mention utilitarianism, so what does that have to do with the above?
The above seems like a strawman or weakman argument. Consider instead Nietzsche’s Critique of Utilitarianism:
Why wouldn’t utilitarianism just weigh the human costs of those measures against proposed benefit of “improving the gene pool” and alternative possible remedies, like anything else?
Probably because from the outset, only one sort of answer is inside the realm of acceptable answers. Anything else would be far outside the Overton window. If they already know what sort of answer they have to produce, doing the actual calculations has no benefit. It’s like a theologian evaluating arguments about the existence of God.
Ok, then that sounds like a criticism of utilitarians, or maybe people, and not utilitarianism. Also, my point didn’t even mention utilitarianism, so what does that have to do with the above?
You mentioned positions I described as straw men or weak men. Darwinist utilitarianism would be more like a steel man.