Regarding all the articles we’ve had about the effectiveness of reason:
Learning about different systems of ethics may be useless. It takes a lot of time to learn all the forms of utilitarianism and their problems, and all the different ethical theories. And all that people do is look until they find one that lets them do what they wanted to do all along.
IF you’re designing an AI, then it would be a good thing to do. Or if you’ve already achieved professional and financial success, and got your personal life in order (whether that’s having a wife, having a family, whatever), and are in a position of power, it would be good to do. But if you’re a grad student or a mid-level manager, it may be a big waste of time. You’ve already got big obvious problems to work on; you don’t need to study esoteric theories of utility to find a problem to work on.
Also potentially useful if you’re involved in any way in policy formation. (And yes, even when there are political constraints).
In practice, I find the most useful aspects of having a working knowledge of lots of different ethical systems is that it makes it easier to:
(a) quickly drill down to the core of many disagreements. Even if they’re not resolvable, being able to find them quickly often saves a lot of pointless going around in circles. (There are network externalities involved here as well. Knowing this stuff is more valuable when other people know it too.)
(b) quickly notice (or suspect) when apparently sensible goal sets are incompatible (though this is perhaps more to do with knowing various impossibility theorems than knowing different ethical systems).
Regarding all the articles we’ve had about the effectiveness of reason:
Learning about different systems of ethics may be useless. It takes a lot of time to learn all the forms of utilitarianism and their problems, and all the different ethical theories. And all that people do is look until they find one that lets them do what they wanted to do all along.
IF you’re designing an AI, then it would be a good thing to do. Or if you’ve already achieved professional and financial success, and got your personal life in order (whether that’s having a wife, having a family, whatever), and are in a position of power, it would be good to do. But if you’re a grad student or a mid-level manager, it may be a big waste of time. You’ve already got big obvious problems to work on; you don’t need to study esoteric theories of utility to find a problem to work on.
Also potentially useful if you’re involved in any way in policy formation. (And yes, even when there are political constraints).
In practice, I find the most useful aspects of having a working knowledge of lots of different ethical systems is that it makes it easier to:
(a) quickly drill down to the core of many disagreements. Even if they’re not resolvable, being able to find them quickly often saves a lot of pointless going around in circles. (There are network externalities involved here as well. Knowing this stuff is more valuable when other people know it too.)
(b) quickly notice (or suspect) when apparently sensible goal sets are incompatible (though this is perhaps more to do with knowing various impossibility theorems than knowing different ethical systems).