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Tag Archives: utilitarianism

Scott Aaronson has misunderstood continental philosophy

It is first with delight and then with a growing feeling of sadness that I read Luke Muelhauser’s interview with the computer scientist Scott Aaronson at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. As a computer scientist, Aaronson has contributed much to our understanding of complexity theory and other areas. He has even written popular science books […]

Posted 27 December 2013 † Johan § Computer science § Philosophy ‡ Comments (3) ° Also tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Technology and utilitarianism

Technologists and engineers often use the ideas of utilitarianism to evaluate their solutions. If something is cheaper, or faster, or lets people live 3.2 days longer on average, or some other number can be optimised, they judge a solution to be better. In short, they use a quantitative form of  judgment. This way of thinking […]

Posted 04 March 2012 † johan § Computer science § Philosophy ‡ Comments (2) ° Also tagged: , ,

Utilitarianism and computability

I’ve started watching Michael Sandel’s Harvard lecture series on political philosophy, “justice”. In this series, Sandel introduces the ideas of major political and moral philosophers, such as Bentham, Locke, and Kant, as well as some libertarian thinkers I hadn’t heard of. I’m only halfway through the series, so I’m sure there’s other big names coming […]

Posted 18 September 2010 † johan § Computer science § Philosophy ‡ Comments (1) ° Also tagged: , ,