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jimrandomh comments on Stupid Questions Open Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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Given that utility functions are only defined up to positive linear transforms, what do total utilitarians and average utilitarians actually mean when they're talking about the sum or the average of several utility functions? I mean, taking what they say literally, if Alice's utility function were twice what it actually is, she would behave the exact same way but she would be twice as ‘important’; that cannot possibly be what they mean. What am I missing?
They don't know. In most cases, they just sort of wave their hands. You can combine utility functions, but "sum" and "average" do not uniquely identify methods for doing so, and no method identified so far has seemed uniquely compelling.