Do you think that Eliezer's arguments about scope insensitivity here should have convinced the Israelis donating to sick children to reevaluate their preferences? Isn't your average utilitarianism based on the same intuition?
Only if they value saving more children in the first place. If the flaw is pointed out, if they understand fully the problem, and then say "actually, I care about warm fuzzies to do with saving children, not saving children per see", then they are monsterous people, but consistent.
You can't say that people have the wrong utility by pointing out scope insensitivity, unless you can convince them that scope insensitivity is morally wrong. I think that scope insensitivity for existent humans is wrong, but fine over non-existent humans, which I don't count as moral agents - just as normal humans aren't worried about the scope insensitivity over the feelings of sand.
I find the repugnant conclusion repugnant. Rejecting it, is however, non-trivial, so I'm working towards an improved utility that has more of my moral values and less problems.
Only if they value saving more children in the first place. If the flaw is pointed out, if they understand fully the problem, and then say "actually, I care about warm fuzzies to do with saving children, not saving children per see", then they are monsterous people, but consistent.
Would that actually be the best way of getting warm fuzzies? Anyways, any set of actions is consistent with maximizing a utility function; sets of preferences are the things that can be inconsistent with utility maximization. I'm not saying that I could convince any ...
Some people see never-existed people as moral agents, and claim that we can talk about their preferences. Generally this means their personal preference in existing versus non-existing. Formulations such "it is better for someone to have existed than not" reflect this way of thinking.
But if the preferences of never-existed are relevant, then their non-personal perferences are also relevant. Do they perfer a blue world or a pink one? Would they want us to change our political systems? Would they want us to not bring into existence some never-existent people they don't like?
It seems that those who are advocating bringing never-existent people into being in order to satisfy those people's preferences should be focusing their attention on their non-personal preferences instead. After all, we can only bring into being so many trillions of trillions of trillions; but there is no theoretical limit to the number of never-existent people whose non-personal preferences we can satisfy. Just get some reasonable measure across the preferences of never-existent people, and see if there's anything that sticks out from the mass.