While I’m not sure I get it either, I think Benquo’s frame has a high level disagreement with the sort of question that utilitarianism asks in the first place (as well as the sort of questions that many non-utilitarian variants of EA are asking). Or rather, objects to the frame in which the question is often asked.
My attempt to summarize the objection is (curious how close this lands for Benquo) is:
”Much of the time, people have internalized moral systems not as something they get to reason about and have agency over, but as something imposed from outside, that they need to submit to. This is a fundamentally unhealthy way to relate to morality.
A person in a bad relationship is further away from a healthy relationship, than a single person, because first the person has to break up with their spouse, which is traumatic and exhausting. A person with a flawed moral foundation trying to figure out how to do good is further away from figuring out how to do good than a person who is just trying to make a generally good life for themselves.
This is important:
a) because if you try to impose your morality on people who are “just making a good life for themselves”, you are continuing to build societal momentum in a direction that alienates people from their own agency and welbeing.
b) “just making a good life for themselves” is, in fact, one of the core goods one can do, and in a just world it’d be what most people were doing.
I think There is A War is one of the earlier Benquo pieces exploring this (or: probably there are earlier-still-ones, but it’s the one I happened to re-read recently). A more recent comment is his objection to Habryka’s take on Integrity (link to comment deep in the conversation that gets to the point, but might require reading the thread for context)
My previous attempt to pass his ITT may also provide some context.
While I’m not sure I get it either, I think Benquo’s frame has a high level disagreement with the sort of question that utilitarianism asks in the first place (as well as the sort of questions that many non-utilitarian variants of EA are asking). Or rather, objects to the frame in which the question is often asked.
My attempt to summarize the objection is (curious how close this lands for Benquo) is:
”Much of the time, people have internalized moral systems not as something they get to reason about and have agency over, but as something imposed from outside, that they need to submit to. This is a fundamentally unhealthy way to relate to morality.
A person in a bad relationship is further away from a healthy relationship, than a single person, because first the person has to break up with their spouse, which is traumatic and exhausting. A person with a flawed moral foundation trying to figure out how to do good is further away from figuring out how to do good than a person who is just trying to make a generally good life for themselves.
This is important:
a) because if you try to impose your morality on people who are “just making a good life for themselves”, you are continuing to build societal momentum in a direction that alienates people from their own agency and welbeing.
b) “just making a good life for themselves” is, in fact, one of the core goods one can do, and in a just world it’d be what most people were doing.
I think There is A War is one of the earlier Benquo pieces exploring this (or: probably there are earlier-still-ones, but it’s the one I happened to re-read recently). A more recent comment is his objection to Habryka’s take on Integrity (link to comment deep in the conversation that gets to the point, but might require reading the thread for context)
My previous attempt to pass his ITT may also provide some context.