This reminds me of the horrible SIAI job interview question: "Would you kill babies if it was intrinsically the right thing to do? If so, how right would it have to be, for how many babies?"
Horrible in the sense of being frustrating to have to answer, or horrible in the sense of not being a useful job interview question?
It's exactly the sort of question I hate to be asked when I have nobody to ask for clarification, because I have no idea how I'm supposed to interpret it. Am I supposed to assume the intrinsic rightness has no relation to human values? Is it testing my ability to imagine myself into a hypothetical universe where killing babies actually makes people happier and better off?
It's a popular religious stance that before a certain a...
Most of the usual thought experiments that justify expected utilitarialism trade off fun for fun, or suffering for suffering. Here's a situation which mixes the two. You are offered to press a button that will select a random person (not you) and torture them for a month. In return the machine will make N people who are not suffering right now have X fun each. The fun will be of the positive variety, not saving any creatures from pain.
1) How large would X and N have to be for you to accept the offer?
2) If you say X or N must be very large, does this prove that you measure torture and fun using in effect different scales, and therefore are a deontologist rather than a utilitarian?