Marginalium

I think a lot of people intuitively like the kind of “calculus of pain and pleasure” that utilitarianism offers. But it often falls short of answering important ethical questions. That’s why there’s heaps of approaches. And as Roberts suggests, it leads to some pretty strange ways of thinking (to me). For example, I point out elsewhere:

There this way of thinking that says, if we just increase overall economic wealth, everyone will be better off (think economists like Tyler Cowan, or lots of the EA folks). You know, bring the average up, and that’ll bring everyone up, sort of thing. These are also often the people who often think things like affirmative action and DEI policies are obstacles to this kind of economic growth
[but] there seems something quite odd about preferring future, hypothetical people over the suffering of real, current people

And also the measures we use are troubling, as that marginalia points out.

Anyway. Here is a detailed, multi-part critique of utilitarianism. See also my own practical ethics, which isn’t quite there yet, but is getting there.