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You can just ask "What flavor of ethics do you prefer; utilitarianism, deontology, egoism and/or contractualism?" instead.

From what I can gather, a lot of ML people are utilitarians, for better or worse. Which is why you're seeing this discussed at all, if we all agreed on the ethics it would have been a no-brainer.





It seems like a misunderstanding of utilitarianism to use it as an excuse to shut down any complaints about something as long as the overall societal benefit is positive. If we actually engage with these issues, we can potentially shift things into an even more positive direction. Why would a utilitarian be against that?

I don't think anyone here tried to use it that way, but it's useful to have some framing around things. It might seem macabre to see people argue "Well, if it killed 10 kids but saved 10,000, doesn't that mean it's good?" without understanding the deeper perspective a person like that would hold, which essentially is a utilitarian.

And I don't think any utilitarian would be against "something with some harm but mostly good can be made to do even less harm".

But the person I initially replied to, obviously doesn't see it as "some harm VS much good" (which we could argue if it's true or not), and would say that any harm + any good is still worth considering if the harm is worth it, besides the good it could do.


>I don't think anyone here tried to use it that way

That's certainly the impression you gave with your response. You didn't engage with the clear example of harmful behavior or debate what various numbers on either side of the equation would mean. Your approach was to circumvent OP's direct question to talk philosophy. That suggests you think there are some philosophical outlooks that could similarly sidestep the question of a therapist pushing people to kill themselves, which is a rather simple and unambiguous example of harm that could be reduced.




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