From a consequentialist perspective, what's the difference

>from a consequentialist perspective
>why does it matter how they explain it to themselves?

>>9991518

OK, I'll give you an example (which might be so general that it's worthless, but whatever); it's possible that the different reasoning, leading to similar immediate results in one instance, might form different patters of behavior when considered over a longer timeframe.

Which reminds me of something else related to consequentialist reasoning. I've often heard Noam Chomsky compare the actions of small, but ineffective groups who kill for "evil" reasons (ex. Islamic extremists) with the actions of large effective killers (ex. US military) who kill for "good" reasons. From his perspective the large scale of US killing makes it worse than killing of extreme islamists, even though islamist reasoning is overtly hateful and the US is (dubiously) well intentioned (he argues that the careless nature of collateral damage deaths actually might make it worse than "evil" reasoning).