My reflex answer is that I should calculate the average amount of utils that I gain per unit of fun given to a random person and lose per unit of torture applied to a random person. I am not a true utilitarian, so this would be affected by the likelihood that the person I picked was of greater importance to me (causing a higher number of utils be gained/lost for fun/torture, respectively) than a random stranger.
Now, let's try to frame this somewhat quantitatively. Pretend that the world is divided into really happy people (RHP) who experience, by default, 150 Fun Units (funU) per month, happy people (HP) who experience 100 funU/mo by default, and sad people (SP) who experience only 50 funU/mo by default. The world is composed of .05 RHP, .7 HP, and .25 SP.For modeling purposes, being tortured means that you lose all of your fun, and then your fun comes back at a rate of 10%/mo. There aren't a significant number of people whom I attach greater-than-stranger importance to, so this doesn't actually affect the calculation much...except that I think that we have at least some chance of getting an FAI working, and Eliezer might be mentally damaged if he got tortured for a month. Were I actually faced with this choice, I would probably come up with a more accurate calculation, but I'll estimate that this factor causes me to arbitrarily bump up everyone's default fun values by 25funU/mo.
Fun lost for average RHP is 175+(175 x .9)+(175 x .8)+(175 x .7), and so on. Fun lost for average HP is 125+(125 x .9)+(125 x .8)+(125 x .7), and so on. Fun lost for average SP is 75+(75 x .9)+(75 x .8)+(75 x .7), and so on.
We average the three, weighting each by a factor of .05, .7, and .25, respectively, and get a number, expressed in funU. Anything higher than this would be my answer, and I predict that I would accept the offer regardless of how many people this funU was split amongst.
Edit: Font coding played havoc with my math.
I am not a true utilitarian, so this would be affected by the likelihood that the person I picked was of greater importance to me (causing a higher number of utils be gained/lost for fun/torture, respectively) than a random stranger.
You needn't value all people equally to be a true utilitarian, at least in the sense the word is used here.
......really happy people (RHP) who experience, by default, 150 Fun Units (funU) per month, happy people (HP) who experience 100 funU/mo by default, and sad people (SP) who experience only 50 funU/mo by default. ... bein
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?