Earlier quoted context omitted.
I studied philosophy and ethics so you can safely assume I know my definitions. But that does not matter, as you apparently failed to read what I wrote. Could you please paraphrase my "greater good argument" that crumbles under close examination? A examination you somehow failed to provide? Maybe you hoped people are too impressed by you use of words to recognize that you even failed to provide an argument against an…
My original post was intended to clarify why I believe Libertarian ideology is distinct from and incompatible with Utilitarianism, particularly since in your response, you conflated the concept of the greater good as a core principle of Libertarian ideology. This is quite surprising given your claim to have "studied philosophy and ethics". To address this misunderstanding, let me break down the logical fallacies I al…
- The "tyranny of the majority" problem is a problem of direct democracy, not utilitarianism. Happiness in utilitarianism is determined not by a number of individuals, but by all individuals and perfect utility function must take into account both majorities and minorities and create consensus. This will only fail if majority and minority have directly opposed interests, but in this case overall good is still better this way (you don't want to deny majority people their rights too in favor for minorities).
- The "majority rules" fallacy is a problem of democracy overall. Every democracy system is vulnerable to this, not only utilitarianism. But then again, perfect utility function should take into account people's desire to not be fooled, so there's that.
- The "ignore individual rights" fallacy is the same as "tyranny of the majority". Utility function takes into account interests of all individuals and tries to create the best possible consensus.
- The "moral arithmetic" fallacy is the best one here, since it's actually close to the truth. You can't really create a perfect utility function, but you don't need to. You can create imperfect one and improve it later with feedback and democracy mechanisms. With time imperfect utility function will get closer and closer to perfect one. Profit maximizing utility function can't be calculated too, but corporations handle it just fine. But if you're not blind, you can see that profit maximizing utility function leads to a lot of real people suffering (climate change, wars, hunger, poverty and many many more) while leading to profit maximization (alignment problem).