A majority of bioethicists affirm that "preventing a death is equally important irrespective of age."
If you don't immediately see why this is evidence of professional incompetence, compare: "every life-extension is equally important irrespective of its duration."
Back when I mostly saw annoying left-wing content, I was repelled by how indifferent to the truth much of it was. Now that I see more annoying right-wing content, I'm repelled by how indifferent it is to both truth and goodness. I wish there was less of a market for dishonesty.
Bizarre how it's taboo to acknowledge that intelligence is good. Many highly intelligent people would - rightly! - rather lose their limbs than suffer brain damage that brought them down to an average IQ.
(In either case, being less able is not a moral fault, but it is
Utilitarianism is just what you get when you take seriously the moral datum that *everyone matters equally*. Other views blatantly deny this, while trying to pretend otherwise.
Always confused when people critique an idea as "dangerous" rather than "false". What are they doing? Are they advocating that ppl should lie (for the "greater good")? Seems esp. self-defeating for criticisms of utilitarianism...
I find it so frustrating to read Vox articles like this: "Optimizing for beneficent impact doesn't maximize my own happy feelings, so it must be bad. Indeed, it must be motivated by a pathological desire for control - what else could explain why people want fewer kids to die?
Maybe you're thinking "new year, new me!" Maybe you have plans to be a better person/friend/partner/citizen in 2025, to ~optimize~ your goodness?
Well, today I've got a piece up on @voxdotcom on the perils of trying to optimize your morality:
vox.com/the-highlight/…
I like this tweet, but it's worth noting that "everything trades off against saving children's lives" is not an "ideological claim", but a basic, undeniable fact.
The thing I don't like about mainstream progressive culture is that it is so intellectually conservative. It unapologetically uses raw social power to enforce conformity, while their core ethic is as unthinking and dogma-driven as that of any Bush-era religious fundamentalist.
I dislike NYTimes columnist Jamelle Bouie, and here's one more reason.
Here, rather than criticizing Noah's views, he calls him a "loser."
Besides being obviously untrue (Noah is making bank on Substack!), it epitomizes the mean-kid style of a common kind of progressive. "We're
Utilitarians: we should care more about others. Like, think how much you care about your loved ones, and what you'd sacrifice to help them. *Everyone* is that important!
Critics: utilitarians just care about math.
I wish people would start using another term, like "naive instrumentalism", to refer to this sort of reasoning. No utilitarian theorists endorse it! Like, literally, zero.
There's a certain type of journalist with an increasingly utilitarian outlook, i.e. it's so important the Good Guys win that the ends justify the means and fairness and accurately are subservient to that. This was subtext for a long time but is now being said explicitly.
Does anyone—literally anyone—think that presidents should generally be allowed to threaten individual institutions like this? To deport legal immigrants for associating with "disapproved" businesses?
What sort of country do they imagine such corruption will create?
