PhilGoetz comments on Average utilitarianism must be correct? - Less Wrong

2 Post author: PhilGoetz 06 April 2009 05:10PM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 07 April 2009 02:42:49PM 2 points [-]

Not unless you mean something very different than I do by average utilitarianism.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 07 April 2009 05:12:25PM *  3 points [-]

I objected to drawing the analogy, and gave the examples that show where the analogy breaks. Utility over specific outcomes values the whole world, with all people in it, together. Alternative possibilities for the whole world figuring into the expected utility calculation are not at all the same as different people. People that the average utilitarianism talks about are not from the alternative worlds, and they do not each constitute the whole world, the whole outcome. This is a completely separate argument, having only surface similarity to the expected utility computation.