What Deontological Bars? - by Scott Alexander
astralcodexten.com · 1,586 words · saved by 1 readers
...
Constraint consequentialists believe that you should try to do good things that improve the world, unless those break hard-and-fast rules (“deontological bars”). For example, you shouldn’t assassinate democratically-elected leaders, even very bad ones. Why not? Since bad leaders set bad policy, and bad policy can kill many thousands of people, wouldn’t it be for the greater good? Because there’s always one gun-owner who thinks any given leader’s policies are bad, so without the rule, every leader would face constant assassination attempts, probably some of them would succeed, and the nation…
saved by
related reading
- Deontology and virtue ethics as "effective theories" of consequentialist ethics — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Alignment & Succession: The Two Bars of Alignmentnosetgauge.com
- Why I am not a longtermist – Windows On Theorywindowsontheory.org
- Why I Don't Buy Any of the Counterexamples to Consequentialismbenthams.substack.com
- Why should ethical anti-realists do ethics? - Joe Carlsmithjoecarlsmith.com
- You Need A Theory of Victory - by Jason Hausenloyfirstscattering.com
- Only Law Can Prevent Extinction — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Naïve Instrumentalism vs Principled Proceduralismgoodthoughts.blog
- Deontological Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)plato.stanford.edu
- Annoyingly Principled People, and what befalls them — LessWronglesswrong.com
- The Case Against AI Control Research — LessWronglesswrong.com
- The Machines Lack Honour — LessWronglesswrong.com