Manfred comments on A response to "Torture vs. Dustspeck": The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - Less Wrong

-4 Post author: Logos01 30 November 2011 03:34AM

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Comment author: Manfred 30 November 2011 11:28:17PM *  0 points [-]

I'll start winding down my answers now. This looks like it may actually hit reverse returns.

Just that you were applying [the principle of self-determination] to torture while not applying it to dust specks - a qualitative difference.

Not even remotely. I applied it to both; it simply does not alter the anti-utility of dust specks. Receiving a dust-speck in one's eye does not alter in any measurable way the capacity for self-determination of an arbitrary individual.

And yet not long ago you said this:

To select 3^^^3 people to get dust specks in their eyes also violates the "principle" of individual self-determination.

True, but it does so significantly less-grossly.

Also remember that the dust speck causes them to blink, measurably.

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If you don't think you can judge how much you'd like two worlds to exist independent of there being someone in those worlds to make a "choice," then you reject utilitarianism.

... what? At what point, exactly, did this become a valid thing for you to say to me? The hypothetical asked us which scenario was worse. That is a choice to be made.

Utilitarianism means that the preference ranking of possible worlds is determined only by the properties of those worlds. The hypothetical is asking for that preference ranking. The fact that you have to choose is a not one of the properties of those worlds.

Comment author: Logos01 01 December 2011 08:08:47AM 0 points [-]

And yet not long ago you said this.

Also remember that the dust speck causes them to blink, measurably.

That has no bearing on the question of self-determination. The sum total of a finitely-large-but-humanly-incomprehensible infinitessimal suffering events in terms of their impact on self-determination is, arguably, non-negligible, but it certainly isn't equivalent to the total, repeated, ruination of said function.

The fact that you have to choose is a not one of the properties of those worlds.

May or may not be a property of those worlds. The question is agnostic to how the worlds are implemented. This is not a trivial or irrelevant detail. In the absence of justification for removal of this property it must be considered.

Even if we do away with that consideration, however, on the balance the argument I've been making holds true.

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