Now suppose someone comes to you and tells you that they will save one billion lives if you promise to do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability.
Suppose you decide that overall you will not be able to do enough evil to counteract saving one billion lives. Should you make the agreement and do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability?
If you do, your actions will have overall good effects. And if you do, you will be doing evil, or you will not be fulfilling your promise.
If you want to talk to people, you need to first understand what they are saying. And they saying that the question that is important to them is, “Is this action good or evil,” not “Are the results good or evil?” Those are two different questions, and there is nothing to prevent them from having different answers.
Here is a perfectly good rule: don’t do evil.
Now suppose someone comes to you and tells you that they will save one billion lives if you promise to do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability.
Suppose you decide that overall you will not be able to do enough evil to counteract saving one billion lives. Should you make the agreement and do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability?
If you do, your actions will have overall good effects. And if you do, you will be doing evil, or you will not be fulfilling your promise.
If you want to talk to people, you need to first understand what they are saying. And they saying that the question that is important to them is, “Is this action good or evil,” not “Are the results good or evil?” Those are two different questions, and there is nothing to prevent them from having different answers.