Eight: Prof Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics, & harnessing the brainpower of academia to tackle the most important research questions
Effective Altruism: An Introduction – 80,000 Hours
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Is There a Difference Between Total and Average Utilitarianism?
It seems like average utilitarianism gets into severe problems whenever it goes into negative territory. People try to write down theories that are some kind of hybrid between total and average utilitarianism, but they don't really work. You either end up just still having all the problems faced by average utilitarianism or you end up with a theory that's radically ina galitarian. The very bestr very best off people are accounted as much more morally important than the worst off people,. That'san even in the fixed population contex, never mind population ethics. And that's pretty good reasona, isn't there perfection ism?
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