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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] 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

RE the trolly problem itself and the application in voting, the libs are probably correct that a less bad thing is worse than a worse thing (tautological correctness being the best kind of correctness).

The way to side step this argument, on a simple utilitarian account, and which I don't really see articulated, is that we are not at the trolly switch. By arguing that the democrats should do more to reduce harm than just positioning themselves at 99pct of damage of the GOP, and aiming to create a block of constituents that could plausibly withhold support for the Dems unless they did better, you may create a world that presents fewer people tied on a proverbial trolly track, when you get to it in the voting booth. It's just of no use affirmatively broadcasting that you will support whatever the Dems give you; this very plausibly contributes to worse aggregate outcomes.