Willingness to be critiqued? Self-examination and scrupulous quantities of doubt?
Both of these will help. A lot.
“Actual good” is a fuzzy concept
True. One could go with “that which causes the greatest happiness”, but one shouldn’t be putting mood-controlling chemicals in the water. One could go with “that which best protects human life”, but one shouldn’t put humanity into a (very safe) zoo where nothing dangerous or interesting can ever happen to them.
This is therefore a major problem for someone actually trying to be a benevolent leader—how to go about it?
The question I would ask is how you tell the difference between actually achieving the manifestation of your values and only making a big show of it
I’d suggest having some metric by which your values can be measured, and measuring it on a regular basis. For example, if you think that a benevolent leader would do best by reducing crime, then you can measure that by tracking crime statistics.
Both of these will help. A lot.
True. One could go with “that which causes the greatest happiness”, but one shouldn’t be putting mood-controlling chemicals in the water. One could go with “that which best protects human life”, but one shouldn’t put humanity into a (very safe) zoo where nothing dangerous or interesting can ever happen to them.
This is therefore a major problem for someone actually trying to be a benevolent leader—how to go about it?
I’d suggest having some metric by which your values can be measured, and measuring it on a regular basis. For example, if you think that a benevolent leader would do best by reducing crime, then you can measure that by tracking crime statistics.