I forget who made this argument, but it was in a large-group OODA loop discussion in New York: the higher the VUCA in a large-scale conflict environment, the more virtue ethics is strategically adaptive because it can accumulate a following via imitability.
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Think of the heat signatures of the 3 ethical orientations under VUCA
Virtue ethics looks like a fixed point
Consequentialist ethics looks like orienteering towards a fixed point
Deontological ethics looks like inscrutable behavior that needs explanation
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This can be seen as different models of leadership, maximizing different eigenvirtues across the moral foundations.
Under some levels of VUCA, deontological reinforcement of hierarchy is an effective approach.
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the boundaries among the 3 seem blurry, but I liken them to: deontological = agile, consequentialist = waterfall, virtue ethics = wireframes with no indication of how to actually build something under them
What you're suggesting is a bit more meta than that... it's something like agile development of a waterfall plan or something.
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I basically agree with that, except I will note that “agile” here must refer to late-2000s capital-A “agile” as taught by the legions of freelance Agile consultants, and probably not the original ethos of agile as the founders of the movement envisioned it...
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