Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)

The ends are the only way to justify the means; what the sloppy thinkers who recite "The ends don't justify the means" really seem to mean is that some means are not justifiable. Which is undeniably true, but because they don't really think their position/slogan through, they often end up gathering a bunch of nonsense along with it.

The objection is he making is essentially the objection a rule-consequentialist would make. Which is that although in this particular situation it would produce better consequences to kill the innocent man and save the 5 people, overall it would produce worse consequences if everyone followed the rule that killing innocent people is an acceptable means to some end.

too much faith in 'friendly AI'. Friendly my ass! Doesn't this guy consume Science Fiction?<p>Seriously, I would extend his argument to assume that all 'hardware is corrupted' as he puts it, though I think it's more accurate to say 'all software is buggy'. For this amazing AI to even exist, it probably had to be pretty damn selfish, pushing out all other potential AI's to get to the top of the heap.<p>Just saying.

But people do make these decisions all the time. Closing watertight doors on a warship? The first responders at Chernobyl? Kamikaze?<p>Not only do we condemn other innocents to death, but also ourselves.

This is an incredible stretch of what I'd take "The Ends Don't Justify The Means" to be. The whole "killing one person to save ten" thing really isn't related.<p>The way I see it, it's about externalities. I push someone onto a train track to save ten people in a mineshaft, fine. Somebody else watches me push someone on a train track, doesn't see the mineshaft, and goes on to push 25 people onto train tracks in the future. Perhaps that's contrived, but when he describes coups in the same terminology it's a lot less so.

So let me get this straight.<p>The author is saying that his answer to the the classic hypothetical dilemma in ethics of "is it right to do harm (murder one) to prevent a greater harm (death of five)" which usually framed in utilitarian-ish debates is:<p><i>a hypothetical incorruptible super awesome version of me would murder the innocent person but as I am not that type of being (and only that type of being can answer the question) I am not going to answer the question</i><p>But why not go all in and pose it thus: "is it better for one person to suffer eternal suffering to free all others from any type of suffering"? And that's why Jesus died for our sins you know. And that really happened. And Jesus was smarter than a hypothetical incorruptible super awesome version of you. Therefore ... I'm not sure where this is going.<p>Maybe what I'm trying to say is (and by all means argue the toss with me and don't shoot me down) Eliezer Yudkowsky <i>sounds</i> a lot smarter than he actually is.

It is never right, to do wrong, for a chance to do right.

Surely a sufficiently advanced AI would simply send a warning signal to the train driver to "hit the brakes quick". Next problem please.

The means produce the ends.

A creature running under that paradigm is abandoning their humanity. We can only exist as human beings with rights if we respect our fellows' human rights.