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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2983 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Piketty’s Crumbs

Don't overthink it.

Consequentialism: "the ends justify the means."

Deontology: "It's the principle of the thing."

Consequentially: it's okay that "today's crumbs are yesterday's loaf" because a loaf is a loaf.

Deontologically: It's not okay that "today's crumbs are yesterday's loaf" because crumbs are crumbs.





user-inactivated  ·  2983 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Don't overthink it.

Or oversimply. Deontology is about rules. You've got your 10 commandments or your categorical imperative or your wiccan rede or... and if you do what your rules say to do you're doing the right thing. This can get silly. Consequentialism is about results, but isn't quite the same as utilitarianism; the Libertarian what's-good-for-me-is-good school of ethics is consequentialist as well. This gets silly too, but I'm not linking to trolly problems or Ayn Rand because I like you guys.

kleinbl00  ·  2983 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's legitimately delightful how reliably you can be baited out by deliberately oversimplifying philosophy.

http://bash.org/?152037

user-inactivated  ·  2983 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I also fall for it with respect to Linux.