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Futilitarianism

"I cause the greatest good, according to my measurements." --everybody

Utilitarianism, i.e. ethics that maximizes good, is clearly the best system of normative ethics...as long as you ignore reality.

There are many criticisms of utilitarianism attacking it from a variety of angles, but fundamentally, utilitarianism is a measurement problem. It doesn't merely *have* a measurement problem--it is one.

For any given act, how do you determine what its results are? When do you start measuring? When do you stop measuring? How much can you attribute to the single act rather than to other acts that led to it or to any other coincidental acts that conspired to produce its outcomes? Similarly, how does moral luck factor into it?

(As much as I'm talking about "acts", this problem is not specific to "act utilitarianism". Every form of utilitarianism suffers the same way.)

The only thorough way to resolve this problem is to limit the scope, but who gets to decide how to limit the scope?

In short, utilitarianism is more of a hollow ideal than a practical system.