Optimizing a Number

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There's two different things going on here that are both interesting and important, but worth teasing apart a little bit. Utilitarian say there is a number called the expected future utility of your actions; over the space of all possible actions, we would like to maximize that number. But other moral strategies don't seem that way. In a deontological strategy, your idea is to follow certain rules, not to calculate a certain number and optimize it. And in a virtue ethics strategy, your goal is to be virtuous in certain ways, again, rather than adding up a number.

Welcome to the February 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number — based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good — and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

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The big news this month is the successful awarding of the first ever Mindscape Big Picture Scholarship. Congratulations to Lyat Melese and Rehman Hassan! We continue to collection donations for next year’s scholarship contest.

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