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Utilitarianism is cringe (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Don't know if I am preaching to the choir, but with how much libs try to use the trolley problem to support their favorite war criminal, it got me thinking just how cringe utilitarianism is.

Whatever utilitarianism may be in theory, in practice, it just trains people to think like bureaucrats who belive themselves to be impartial observers of society (not true), holding power over the lives of others for the sake of the common good. It's imo a perfect distillation of bourgeois ideology into a theory of ethics. It's a theory of ethics from the pov of a statesman or a capitalist. Only those groups of people have the power and information necessary to actually act in a meaningfully utilitarian manner.

It's also note worthy just how prone to creating false dichotomies and ignoring historical context utilitarians are. Although this might just be the result of the trolley problem being so popular.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah this. As well as, in practice, humans tend to act first, then create ethical justification post-hoc. Even if we were able to create a totally ethical system, it would be unlikely to ever actually be applied correctly.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be attempting to create better things, or more ethical outcomes, it just means that getting bogged down in ethical arguments is pointless. To quote Parenti, I support the revolution that feeds and teaches the children.