endoself comments on A (small) critique of total utilitarianism - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 26 June 2012 12:36PM

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Comment author: endoself 25 June 2012 08:47:07PM 5 points [-]

and in theory also "positive", even though that would be insane, forcing people to accept eternal torture if there's even the slightest chance of a moment of happiness

There exist people who profess that they would choose to be tortured for the rest of their lives with no chance of happiness rather than being killed instantly, so this intuition could be more than theoretically possible. People tend to be surprised by the extent to which intuitions differ.