Utilitarianism and Its Flavors (with Nick Beckstead)

1. Prioritize Reducing Suffering

Focus on reducing suffering and increasing happiness, as these are widely agreed-upon goods that can serve as a common ground for moral action. This principle provides a shared objective for improving the world.

2. Apply Utilitarianism Selectively

Use utilitarian reasoning as your primary guide when your goal is to impartially help others through actions conventionally regarded as acceptable and within your rights. Recognize that it’s a powerful framework for “doing good” but not necessarily a master theory for all moral situations.

3. Integrate Moral Constraints

Acknowledge that strict utilitarianism can conflict with common-sense morality regarding constraints (e.g., not lying, respecting rights), options (e.g., personal life choices not being optimal), and special obligations (e.g., family duties). When applying utilitarian frameworks, respect these conventional moral boundaries in practice.

4. Employ Heuristics for Complex Problems

For complex, high-stakes, or unquantifiable decisions, prioritize using effective heuristics (e.g., funding revolutionary scientists, comparing projects to near-term alternatives) over attempting precise utilitarian calculations. These heuristics can often lead to better outcomes when direct calculation is impractical or misleading.

5. Calculate for High-Stakes Decisions

Engage in detailed expected utility calculations when facing high-stakes decisions that are repeatable or involve significant, quantifiable impact, such as allocating funds between different charitable causes. This approach is most appropriate when you have a productive way to run the numbers.

6. Practice Impartial Empathy

Treat everyone else’s well-being with the same seriousness and care as your own or that of your loved ones, extending the “golden rule” to all sentient beings. This perspective fosters a noble and productive framework for doing good.

7. Aspire to Expected Utility

View expected utility theory as a criterion for successful action to aspire to, rather than a constant computational directive. Aim to make choices that an ideally rational self, with perfect information, would determine has the highest expected value, especially in domains where utilitarianism is applicable.

8. Sum Well-being for Fixed Populations

For situations with a fixed population size, adopt the utilitarian approach of summing up everyone’s well-being to determine the best outcome, provided you accept principles like individual expected utility maximization, Pareto efficiency, and impartiality. This provides a clear framework for evaluating actions in such contexts.

9. Adopt Total Utilitarianism

For population ethics, consider adopting a total utilitarian view where the neutral level of well-being (neither good nor bad to add a life) is set at zero, conceptualized as a maximally short life where nothing happens. This approach avoids issues with average utility and past dependence.

10. Avoid Average Utility Maximization

Do not solely aim to maximize average utility, especially in population ethics, because it can lead to counterintuitive outcomes where adding more suffering beings could theoretically increase the average if their suffering is less severe than existing suffering. This highlights a flaw in that aggregation method.

11. Deconstruct Moral Theories

When evaluating moral theories like utilitarianism, break them down into core components (e.g., consequentialism, theory of value, theory of well-being) to understand their full complexity and variations. This helps in grasping the nuances and different “flavors” of a theory.

12. Choose Consequentialist Approach

When making decisions, consider whether to prioritize actions that maximize immediate good (act consequentialism) or to follow rules that generally lead to the best outcomes (rule consequentialism). This choice influences how you navigate ethical dilemmas.

13. Justify Rights with Consequences

When debating or grounding moral rights (e.g., free expression), seek to justify them by explaining their positive consequences for sentient beings or society, rather than simply stating them as inherent. This approach can lead to more satisfying and compelling arguments.

14. Choose a Theory of Well-being

When applying utilitarian principles, explicitly consider and choose a theory of well-being to maximize (e.g., hedonic pleasure, preference satisfaction, or an objective list of goods like relationships and knowledge). This choice clarifies what you are ultimately trying to optimize.

15. Empirically Define Moral Patients

After establishing your theory of well-being, determine which beings count as “moral patients” (e.g., animals, insects) by empirically assessing which ones are capable of experiencing that defined well-being. This separates the ethical goal from the scientific question of consciousness.

16. View Ethics as Proposals

Consider adopting an anti-realist meta-ethical stance, viewing moral theories not as objective truths but as proposals for how to live and live together that we reflectively endorse. This reframes ethical discussions around shared commitments and meaningful ways of life.