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D227 comments on Do the people behind the veil of ignorance vote for "specks"? - Less Wrong
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Having a utility function that allows an incomprehensible greater total suffering is a failure of epistemic, not instrumental, rationality. By choosing the dust specks, you implicitly assert that more suffering than has ever been known and ever will be known on Earth, times a hundred million billion trillion, is superior to a single torture victim.
This is probably the most patronizing thing I'll ever say on this website, but: Think about that for a second.
I'm only pointing this out because no one else mentioned that instrumental rationality is independent of what your goals are, so that says nothing about whether your goals are simply incorrect. (You don't really want the Dust Holocaust, do you? to allow that much suffering in exchange for, comparatively, nothing?)
I haven't read ALL the discussion about this issue, but that's because it's so damned simple if you seek to feel fully the implications of that number, that number that transcends any attempt to even describe.
Edited to add: here Pfft said to just take goals and make them axiomatic. That is literally impossible. You have to have a reason for every one of your goals, and all the better to have motivations based in fact, not fancy.