The Utilitarian Truth-Seeker
Written by Stefan Schubert
Utilitarianism is often associated with two psychological features.
First, acceptance of instrumental harm for the greater good. The utilitarian is famously willing to kill one to save five in the trolley problem.
Second, impartial beneficence. The utilitarian is equally concerned with everyone’s well-being, irrespective of their gender, nationality, or species. And they don’t privilege themselves over others.
The recent Oxford Utilitarianism Scale defines utilitarian tendencies in terms of these two features.
On this view, you need to have a somewhat unusual psychology to accept utilitarianism. On the one hand, an unusual level of altruism towards all. On the other hand, a willingness to break taboos against harm for the sake of the greater good. Continue reading
The Psychology of Existential Risk: Moral Judgments about Human Extinction
Written by Stefan Schubert
This blog post reports on: Schubert, S.**, Caviola, L.**, Faber, N. The Psychology of Existential Risk: Moral Judgments about Human Extinction. Scientific Reports. [Open Access]
Humanity’s ever-increasing technological powers can, if handled well, greatly improve life on Earth. But if they’re not handled well, they may instead cause our ultimate demise: human extinction. Recent years have seen an increased focus on the threat that emerging technologies such as advanced artificial intelligence could pose to humanity’s continued survival (see, e.g., Bostrom, 2014; Ord, forthcoming). A common view among these researchers is that human extinction would be much worse, morally speaking, than almost-as-severe catastrophes from which we could recover. Since humanity’s future could be very long and very good, it’s an imperative that we survive, on this view. Continue reading
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