novalis comments on Humans are utility monsters - Less Wrong

67 Post author: PhilGoetz 16 August 2013 09:05PM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 16 August 2013 10:04:57PM *  6 points [-]

The qualification that a utility monster is not susceptible to diminishing marginal returns is made only because they're still assuming utility is measured in something like dollars, which has diminishing marginal returns, rather than units of utility, which do not. Removing that qualification doesn't banish the utility monster. The important point is that the utility monster's utility is much larger than anybody else's.

Comment author: novalis 17 August 2013 12:23:41AM 0 points [-]

Presumably, that's diminishing marginal returns relative to dollars input. In other words, "You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are."