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

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

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

Comments (237)

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

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 June 2012 06:02:31PM *  1 point [-]

Note that markup requires a blank line between your quote and the rest of the topic.

It does beg a question: specifically, the question of whether I ought to implement my preferences (or some approximation of them) in the first place. If, for example, my preferences are instead irrelevant to what I ought to do, then time spent working out my preferences is time that could better have been spent doing something else.

All of that said, it sounds like you're suggesting that suffering is somehow unrelated to the way evolution set up our values. If that is what you're suggesting, then I'm completely at a loss to understand either your model of what suffering is, or how evolution works.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 27 June 2012 06:10:58PM 0 points [-]

The fact that suffering feels awful is about the very thing, and nothing else. There's no valuing required, no being ask itself "should I dislike this experience" when it is in suffering. It wouldn't be suffering otherwise.

My position implies that in a world without suffering (or happiness, if I were not a negative utiltiarian), nothing would matter.