Johnicholas comments on The Lifespan Dilemma - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 September 2009 06:45PM

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Comment author: Johnicholas 14 September 2009 11:55:20PM 2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Alicorn 15 September 2009 12:24:58AM 6 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 14 September 2009 11:59:15PM 1 point [-]

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.