two related points on utilitarianism

[stardust_rifle]

I generally think that it's okay to have rules about what is and isn't morally okay that aren't "does this hurt people", however, i don't think it's okay when those rules override the "does this hurt people"*.

As a related point, while in the abstract "is it okay to do a small amount of harm to someone in order to prevent a greater harm from happening later" is a question I'd probably say "yes" to, this does not apply when the small harm is definite and concrete (making people feel bad over their lack of religiosity/porn preferences) and the "greater harm" is abstract and far-off or straight up just fake bullshit (the atheist eventually going to Hell, OP's porn preferences increasing the amount of sexism in the world and subsequently making more women unhappy in the future)


(For a definition of "hurt" that includes emotional damage, that is)

Comments

[feotakahari]

Most Utilitarians ditch hedonic calculus, but I think Certainty, at least, is a very important point. It’s often a bad idea to value what may happen in the future over what’s definitely happening now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicific_calculus