A negative utilitarian could easily judge that something that had the side effect of making people infertile would cause far less suffering than not doing it, causing immense real world suffering amongst the people who wanted to have kids, and ending civilizations. If they were competent enough, or the problem slightly easier than expected, they could use a disease that did that without obvious symptoms, and end humanity.
But you’re thinking of people completely dedicated to an ideology.
That’s why I’m saying a “negative utilitarian charter” rather than “a government formed of people autistically following a philosophy”… much like, e.g. the US government has a “liberal democratic” charter, or the USSR had a “communist” charter of sorts.
In practice these things don’t come about because member in the organization disagree, secret leak, conspiracies are throttled by lack of consensus, politicians voted out, engineered solutions imperfect (and good engineers and scinetists are aware of as much)
It doesn’t take many people to cause these effects. If we make them ‘the way’, following them doesn’t take an extremist, just someone trying to make the world better, or some maximizer. Both these types are plenty common, and don’t have to make it fanatical at all. The maximizer could just be a small band of petty bureaucrats who happen to have power over the area in question. Each one of them just does their role, with a knowledge that it is to prevent overall suffering. These aren’t even the kind of bureaucrats we usually dislike! They are also monsters, because the system has terrible (and knowable) side effects.
But you’re thinking of people completely dedicated to an ideology.
That’s why I’m saying a “negative utilitarian charter” rather than “a government formed of people autistically following a philosophy”… much like, e.g. the US government has a “liberal democratic” charter, or the USSR had a “communist” charter of sorts.
In practice these things don’t come about because member in the organization disagree, secret leak, conspiracies are throttled by lack of consensus, politicians voted out, engineered solutions imperfect (and good engineers and scinetists are aware of as much)
It doesn’t take many people to cause these effects. If we make them ‘the way’, following them doesn’t take an extremist, just someone trying to make the world better, or some maximizer. Both these types are plenty common, and don’t have to make it fanatical at all. The maximizer could just be a small band of petty bureaucrats who happen to have power over the area in question. Each one of them just does their role, with a knowledge that it is to prevent overall suffering. These aren’t even the kind of bureaucrats we usually dislike! They are also monsters, because the system has terrible (and knowable) side effects.