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nyan_sandwich comments on Pinpointing Utility - Less Wrong
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I see what you guys are getting at, but it was useful to go somewhere hellish to demonstrate certain invariances, and the quoted comment was too good to pass up. I could have used more sensitive examples, but it did go through my mind that I wanted to make it horrible for some reason... I won't change it, but will steer away from such examples in the future.
That said, it's interesting that people react to the thought of rape and torture, but not the universe getting paperclipped, which is many many orders of magnitude worse.
I get more angry at a turtle getting thrown against the wall than I do at genocides... I guess some things just hit you hard out of proportion to their actual value.
Ooops, you tried to feel a utility. Go directly to type theory hell; do not pass go, do not collect 200 utils.
I don't think this example is evidence against trying to 'feel' a utility. You didn't account for scope insensitivity and the qualitative difference between the two things you think you're comparing.
You need to compare the feeling of the turtle thrown against the wall to the cumulative feeling when you think about EACH individual beheading, shooting, orphaned child, open grave, and every other atrocity of the genocide. Thinking about the vague concept "genocide" doesn't use the same part of your brain as thinking about the turtle incident.