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Jonathan_Graehl comments on The Lifespan Dilemma - Less Wrong
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I misread Vladimir's comment as "torture vs. specks only works for average" ... when in fact he said "also works". So what I said was in fact already obvious to him. My apologies.
Avg utility for torture is (Nk-T)/N. Avg utility for dust specs is (Nk-bD)/N
where n is the number (3^^3^^3) who'd get dust specks, N>n is the total number of people, and per person: k is the mean utility, and T and D are the (negative) utilities of torture and a single dust speck, respectively.
For the total utility, just remove the "/(n+b)" part. There's no difference in which you should prefer under avg. vs total.
A small change - the differences between average and total utility occur in decisions on whether to create a person or not. Average utilitarians create people if their utility would be higher than average, while toatl utilitarians create people if their utility would be positive.
And if they would not, in existing, decrease anyone else's utility by enough to offset their own.
That's true. I was only addressing dust specks vs. torture, where people are neither created nor destroyed. Just saying that would have been sufficient; it's a generally sufficient condition for the preferred outcome to be the same under avg. vs total.