Each person has about a 1 in 12000 chance of having an unruptured aneurysm in the brain that could be detected and then treated after having a virtually risk free magnetic resonance angiography. Given the utility you likely assign to your own life it would be rational to undergo such a screening. At least it would make much more sense than signing up for cryonics. Yet you don't do it, do you?
Does this make sense? How much does the scan cost? How long does it take? What are the costs and risks of the treatment? Essentially, are the facts as you state them?
Expected utility maximization in combination with consequentialism is the ultimate recipe for extreme and absurd decisions and actions.
I don't think so. Are you thinking of utilitarianism? If so, expected utility maximization != utilitarianism.
expected utility maximization != utilitarianism.
Ok what's the difference here? By "utilitarianism" do you mean the old straw-man version of utilitarianism with bad utility function and no ethical injunctions?
I usually take utilitarianism to be consequentialism + max(E(U)) + sane human-value metaethics. Am I confused?
...has finally been published.
Contents:
The issue consists of responses to Chalmers (2010). Future volumes will contain additional articles from Shulman & Bostrom, Igor Aleksander, Richard Brown, Ray Kurzweil, Pamela McCorduck, Chris Nunn, Arkady Plotnitsky, Jesse Prinz, Susan Schneider, Murray Shanahan, Burt Voorhees, and a response from Chalmers.
McDermott's chapter should be supplemented with this, which he says he didn't have space for in his JCS article.