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aelephant comments on Humans are utility monsters - Less Wrong
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When you're talking about the utility of squirrels, what exactly are you calculating? How much you personally value squirrels? How do you measure that? If it is just a thought experiment ("I would pay $1 per squirrel to prevent their deaths") how do you know that you aren't just lying to yourself & if it really came down to it, you wouldn't pay? Maybe we can only really calculate utility after the fact by looking at what people do rather than what they say.
I may not actually want to pay $1 per squirrel, but if I still want to want to, then that's as significant a part of my ethics as my desire to avoid being a wire-head, even though once I tried it I would almost certainly never want to stop.
I would rather observe you & see what you do to avoid becoming a wirehead. I'd put saying you want to avoid becoming a wirehead & saying you want to want to pay to save the squirrels in the same camp -- totally unprovable at this point in time. In the future maybe we can scan your brain & see which of your stated preferences you are likely to act on; that'd be extremely cool, especially if we could scan politicians during their campaigns.
How do you know those people aren't still "lying to themselves"? Humans are not known for being perfect, bias-free reasoners.
Maybe we can only really calculate utility after the fact by looking at what perfect Bayesian agents do rather than mere mortals.