This feels really important to me, in a way that’s much less like ‘the good name of utilitarianism must be defended’ than like ‘zero-sum bias is a sneaky evil bastard, don’t ever let it get away with hiding behind other names’.
I agree, but also, like, I think its good to notice the skulls here. This bias isn’t equivalent to utilitarianism, but often justifies itself on utilitarian grounds, and utilitarians… don’t necessarily seem like they do all that much to try to stave off such biases when making their decisions or advocating for their moral frameworks. Indeed, it sometimes seems to me utilitiarians often revel in their ability to make hard moral tradeoffs rather than their ability to try to think of ways to get all of what they want without having to trade anything off (which is what the “steel utilitarian” would do).
I like this interpretation, but ‘criticism of [something like zero-sum] bias rationalized as utilitarianism’ ≠ ‘criticism of utilitarianism’.[1]
This feels really important to me, in a way that’s much less like ‘the good name of utilitarianism must be defended’ than like ‘zero-sum bias is a sneaky evil bastard, don’t ever let it get away with hiding behind other names’.
I agree, but also, like, I think its good to notice the skulls here. This bias isn’t equivalent to utilitarianism, but often justifies itself on utilitarian grounds, and utilitarians… don’t necessarily seem like they do all that much to try to stave off such biases when making their decisions or advocating for their moral frameworks. Indeed, it sometimes seems to me utilitiarians often revel in their ability to make hard moral tradeoffs rather than their ability to try to think of ways to get all of what they want without having to trade anything off (which is what the “steel utilitarian” would do).