feotakahari

I don’t talk about my ethics much anymore, but I think what I mean when I talk about ethics is different from what other people mean. I think of it like there’s a machine marked “utils,” and if you press the right buttons on it, it will make some utils. What I want to do is write instructions about how to use the machine. There are wrong buttons I think people should not press, and even buttons I think other people should stop you from pressing, but I don’t think the machine itself grabs your arms and makes you press the right buttons. And if you don’t press a button, the machine doesn’t throw red paint on you so people will know you’re immoral.

People say Utilitarianism is too strict, because it makes you press too many different buttons. But I think what Utilitarianism does is tell you that there are more buttons you could be pressing. And there are a lot of buttons, so realistically, nobody actually presses every single good one. It would be meaningless for the instructions to say “press every good button at all times,” because people still wouldn’t do it.

I’ve been told that I can’t write this kind of ethics, because ethics requires the concept of “you should do such-and-such.” In that case, I’d be happy to say the thing I’m writing isn’t ethics. Call it “fweeb” or whatever, because the name doesn’t matter.