> Lawyers sue institutions every time they harm someone (but not when they fail to benefit someone)
> pull the culture towards celebrating harm-avoidance as the greatest good, and cast suspicion on anyone who tries to add benefit-getting to the calculation
Minor nitpick, but it is more accurate to say that they prefer prevention of new harms over the prevention of old harms.
The current wording (plus the commentary over Gnosticism) kinda makes it sound like negative utilitarianism, or harm aversion (preferring the reduction of suffering over the addition of "positive pleasures") which would be a legitimate position. But the post is something more like "new risks aversion", i.e. preferring current harms over possible new harms regardless of the lower intensity of the "possible new harms", which sounds pretty irrational.
> pull the culture towards celebrating harm-avoidance as the greatest good, and cast suspicion on anyone who tries to add benefit-getting to the calculation
Minor nitpick, but it is more accurate to say that they prefer prevention of new harms over the prevention of old harms.
The current wording (plus the commentary over Gnosticism) kinda makes it sound like negative utilitarianism, or harm aversion (preferring the reduction of suffering over the addition of "positive pleasures") which would be a legitimate position. But the post is something more like "new risks aversion", i.e. preferring current harms over possible new harms regardless of the lower intensity of the "possible new harms", which sounds pretty irrational.