Normal_Anomaly comments on Human errors, human values - Less Wrong

32 Post author: PhilGoetz 09 April 2011 02:50AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (135)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 10 April 2011 01:00:50AM 0 points [-]

I'm pretty sure all you mean by "utilitarian" is that our values, whatever they are, should be/are encoded into a utility function.

Yes.

The standard definition of a utilitarian is someone who thinks we should maximize the aggregate utility of all humans/morally relevant agents, and it comes with a whole host of problems.

I don't think that's standard anymore. The terms "total utilitarian" and "average utilitarian" are generally recognized, where "total utilitarian" means what you called "utilitarian".

Comment author: Matt_Simpson 10 April 2011 07:56:33PM 2 points [-]

I don't think that's standard anymore. The terms "total utilitarian" and "average utilitarian" are generally recognized, where "total utilitarian" means what you called "utilitarian".

"Average" and "total" utilitarian are just two different ways of specifying what "aggregate" means though. To my knowledge, none of the standard utilitarian positions (outside of lesswrong) say "maximize your own values." (I'm willing to be corrected here.) To LWer's, it's not confusing, but to most outsiders, they'll probably come away with a different message than you intended.