Utilitarianism vs Consequentialism

And why people don't respect rationalists

As some of you are already aware, I consider myself a member of the rationalist community, or at least somebody who is rationalist-adjacent. I want you to bear that in mind as I offer this critique of the rationalist community. People who are part of our own tribe are sometimes subject to the most intense criticism because in a way, they’re like family: their flaws become more frustrating simply because you have to live with them all the time. With strangers, you can walk away, but with family you have to deal with the same excuses and rationalizations over and over, which can get a little annoying. So when I use this blog post to discuss some of the major moral and philosophical defects that rationalists suffer from, I want you to remember that I am not saying they are bad people - I am simply offering a few guidelines for self-improvement. There are quite a few evil groups on this planet that need to be dealt with harshly, but I don’t consider the rationalist community to be one of them. On the contrary, I hope that by providing some feedback and guidance, I can help the rationalist community become more successful in their efforts to spread their ideology throughout society.

Most rationalists suffer from a misguided ideology called utilitarianism, a philosophy which states that the optimal course of action is to create the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people. For example, if you have to steal from one person to improve the lives of ten people, a utilitarian would say that you should do it. If you have to lie to the public in order to preserve social stability because exposing the truth could cost lives, a utilitarian would be completely in favor of this. Of course, all it takes is a little common sense to figure out what a monstrous philosophy this is. According to a utilitarian, slavery was completely OK because a lot of people were really happy about owning slaves, so the unhappiness of a relatively small number of slaves was irrelevant in comparison to the high number of people in the Confederacy who were happy about the economic benefits of slavery. And if the Nazis derived a lot of social stability and happiness from killing the Jews, they should be allowed to do it. After all, killing Jews makes Nazis happy, and there were a lot more Nazis than Jews, so according to utilitarianism we should do what makes the greatest number of people happy.

I don’t want to dismiss utilitarianism completely, because as moral philosophies go it’s not without its good traits. Most people’s moral instincts aren’t that great, so determining whether any given behavior is good or bad based on a mathematical process rather than gut intuition is both smart and useful. The trouble with utilitarianism is not that rationalists use math to determine morality, it’s that their math is completely wrong. In a sensible ethical system, not everybody’s happiness has value. In fact, not everybody’s life has value. We shouldn’t care about the happiness of Nazis¹ or slaveowners, in fact we should exterminate such people at every possible opportunity. If we’re analyzing people’s lives in terms of their value to society, then we should admit to ourselves that not everybody’s lives have positive value. Some people’s lives provide zero value to society, and other people’s lives provide negative value because they actively harm society through their existence. In other words, when it comes to people with negative value, we shouldn’t be trying to make such people happy; we should be trying to kill them. Their continued existence is actively bad for society, and civilization as a whole would be improved if these people were to be wiped out. Although it may seem pretty obvious and intuitive to say that slaveowners are bad people who all deserve death, most utilitarians in the rationalist community find this statement controversial for some reason, because as a rationalist you’re apparently not allowed to say that certain people deserve to die².

It’s even more puzzling because the need to kill bad human beings has already been tacitly enshrined into law simply by the fact that we have a military. If every problem we have with bad people could be resolved by talking things out, then why do we have a huge branch of the federal government dedicated to wiping them out? Everybody who is either in the military or who endorses the existence of the military understands that bad people exist and sometimes need to be killed, so why it is so forbidden in our society to come out openly and just say it? Instead, our society expects us to beat around the bush and pretend that our military is a peaceful organization that spreads love and compassion, because directly telling the truth - “Bad people exist, and they need to be wiped out" - sounds mean. And we wouldn’t want to be thought of as mean people by accidentally telling the truth, now would we?

In my opinion, this is why rationalists have achieved relatively little fame or success in our society. If your whole schtick is being an intellectual dedicated to the search for truth no matter where it takes you, most people consider it pretty pathetic when your moral philosophy doesn’t even allow you to admit obvious facts like this because you’re worried that telling a harsh truth will make you sound mean. Basically this inability to admit self-evident facts undermines the authenticity of the entire rationalist movement.

Personally, I subscribe to a superior moral philosophy called consequentialism. Consequentialism is similar to utilitarianism in the sense that it uses ethical calculus to calculate the virtuous course of action, but where the utilitarian tries to maximize happiness for everybody, the consequentialist tries to maximize happiness only for good people, while maximizing unpleasant consequences for bad people. Unlike utilitarians, consequentialists understand that there is a difference between good and bad behavior, and try to incentivize people appropriately. For a consequentialist, it is better to kill millions of bad people rather than allow a single good person to suffer unnecessarily. From a mathematical perspective, this is because the good person has a positive value (and should be helped) whereas the bad people have negative value (and should be eliminated). Consequentialism also eliminates all kinds of ridiculous value judgements that utilitarianism suffers from, like the idea that it’s OK for a good person to suffer at the hands of bad people just because it makes the bad people happy and they outnumber the good person.

It is my hope that over time, the rationalist community shifts from utilitarian ideals to consequentialist ideals. This won’t happen overnight: initially, it will seem more like a schism in the rationalist movement where a few people adopt the superior ethics of consequentialism while the other rationalists clutch their pearls and wring their hands about their “wayward comrades going astray.” But consequentialism is a much more optimal ideology than utilitarianism because it incentivizes strangers to treat you well if they don’t want to get hurt, and that’s why I feel that over time, consequentialism will outcompete the inferior philosophy of utilitarianism. It’s my hope that I can speed up this process, so that the rationalist community starts getting the credit that it deserves. If you agree with me, please spread the word. The more people learn about the benefits of consequentialism, the faster we can make this paradigm shift happen.

1

I am talking about real Nazis here, not Joe Rogan, Donald Trump, or anybody who disagrees with our media elites.

Which is very surprising considering that the rationalist community tolerates a lot of discussions that border on eugenics.

2.