Ben_Jones comments on The "Intuitions" Behind "Utilitarianism" - Less Wrong

29 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 January 2008 04:29PM

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Comment author: Ben_Jones 30 January 2008 09:35:00AM 0 points [-]

But you've changed the question.

I've added a wildcard, certainly, but I haven't changed the game. Say I'm standing there, lever in hand. While I can't be certain, I can fairly safely assume that if I went person to person and asked, the vast majority of those 3^^^3 would be personally willing to suffer a dust speck to save one person's torture. So I'm not necessarily polling, I'm just conjecturing. With this in mind, I choose specks.

[If I were to poll people, every now and then I would probably come across a Cold Hard Ratinoalist who said, "well, I'm happy to take the speck, but I have to consider the potential disutility to all these people if I said 'dust'...."

And I would reply, "That's not what I asked you! Let them worry about that. Get over yourself, shut up, and vote!"]