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endoself comments on Torturing people for fun - Less Wrong Discussion

13 Post author: cousin_it 14 February 2011 08:52PM

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Comment author: endoself 14 February 2011 11:20:17PM 2 points [-]

Jeremy Bentham actually mentioned this in the initial form of utilitarianism. He said that the "felicific calculus" required one to take into account fecundity, which was a measure of how likely a pleasurable/painful experience would cause more pleasure/pain in the future, and purity, which measured how likely a pleasurable experience was to not be followed by a painful one, or vice versa.