Second-order effects matter. Doing X is not only doing X. Becoming the type of person who does things in the reference class of X is one of the effects of your actions. Your reputation can likewise be affected. Your behavior can be copied by others, sometimes lossily. If it would be downright catastrophic for a chunk of society to do things vaguely shaped like X on a regular basis, you probably shouldn’t do X.
If a utilitarian calculus concludes that you should do something that strongly violates societal norms of morality (a la virtue effects and deontology), your math is probably bad. Be humble. (You probably didn’t invent new physics while doing your math homework, you probably didn’t discover that “letting kids drown is sometimes good actually.”)
Be suspicious of unintuitive moral conclusions that violate norms in your favor.
I thought another one:
4. Beware of simplifying assumptions and the Either/Or fallacy. You do not live in a moral philosophy dilemma. Reality has high dimensionality and the trade-offs are not always obvious and clean.
Second-order effects matter. Doing X is not only doing X. Becoming the type of person who does things in the reference class of X is one of the effects of your actions. Your reputation can likewise be affected. Your behavior can be copied by others, sometimes lossily. If it would be downright catastrophic for a chunk of society to do things vaguely shaped like X on a regular basis, you probably shouldn’t do X.
If a utilitarian calculus concludes that you should do something that strongly violates societal norms of morality (a la virtue effects and deontology), your math is probably bad. Be humble. (You probably didn’t invent new physics while doing your math homework, you probably didn’t discover that “letting kids drown is sometimes good actually.”)
Be suspicious of unintuitive moral conclusions that violate norms in your favor.
I thought another one: 4. Beware of simplifying assumptions and the Either/Or fallacy. You do not live in a moral philosophy dilemma. Reality has high dimensionality and the trade-offs are not always obvious and clean.