Troubadour comments on Torture vs. Dust Specks - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 October 2007 02:50AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 10 April 2015 11:47:56PM *  0 points [-]

Oh, good point, maybe a kind of alphabetical ordering could break ties.

So then, we disregard everyone who isn't affected by the possible action and maximize over the utilities of those who are.

But still, this prefers a million people being punched once to any one person being punched twice, which seems silly --- I'm just trying to parse out my intuition for choosing dust specks.

I get other possible methods being flawed is a mark for linear aggregation, but what positive reasons are there for it?