thomblake comments on The Difficulties of Potential People and Decision Making - Less Wrong

5 Post author: FrankAdamek 04 August 2009 06:14AM

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Comment author: thomblake 04 August 2009 02:57:05PM 0 points [-]

What it means to "average" or "sum" the utility functions of individuals needs definition.

meh. That's gone over well enough in the literature.

I don't think that if e.g. the Amish decide to reproduce such that we expect them to be half the population in 100 years, then the expected personal utility of that half of the population should be weighed at less than half of the 100 years from now population (i.e. less valuable per capita). This may just be my selfish genes (or anti-Amish bias!) speaking.

This didn't make sense to me. Did you forget that you were making a negative statement?

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 04 August 2009 05:49:39PM 0 points [-]

That's gone over well enough in the literature.

It's hard to have a sensible conversation about it without the definition, though.

This didn't make sense to me. Did you forget that you were making a negative statement?

Yep, Franken-edit. I've removed the extra negative for posterity.

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