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army1987 comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey: Call For Critiques/Questions - Less Wrong Discussion

20 Post author: Yvain 19 October 2012 01:12AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 21 October 2012 01:29:57AM 2 points [-]

Of course not. Why the hell would I?

Comment author: V_V 21 October 2012 12:45:19PM 1 point [-]

If you were a total utilitarianist you would likely believe that accepting the offer is the only moral option.

Comment author: wedrifid 21 October 2012 01:31:31PM *  2 points [-]

If you were a total utilitarianist you would likely believe that accepting the offer is the only moral option.

You your specification doesn't make this necessarily true. You set the bounds on the utility of the subsistence farmers to "> 0", rather than "> current_you/100,000". Of course total utilitarians being what they are (crazy), it is actually only required that "bonus_utility_for_Stark + subsistence_utility * 100,000 > current_you_utility". ie. The total utilitarian would willingly submit 100,000 instances of himself to a negative utility fate worse than death if it made Stark (sufficiently) happy.

(Note the usage "total utilitarian" rather than "total utilitarianist".)

Comment author: prase 21 October 2012 03:32:01PM 0 points [-]

(Note the usage "total utilitarian" rather than "total utilitarianist".)

Is "total utilitarianist" a thing (distinct from "total utilitarian)"?

Comment author: Kindly 21 October 2012 06:55:18PM 2 points [-]

The word "utilitarian" is already terrible (everything past the first four letters is a jumble of suffix); even if "utilitarianist" were a real word, it would be better not to use it.

I wonder how hard it would be to convince everyone (or at least a substantial minority of everyone) to switch to "utilist" or something equally concise.

Comment author: wedrifid 22 October 2012 10:09:39PM *  2 points [-]

I wonder how hard it would be to convince everyone (or at least a substantial minority of everyone) to switch to "utilist" or something equally concise.

I'd prefer to switch everyone to abandoning "utilitarian" entirely as a ridiculous (and abhorrent) value system that doesn't deserve the privilege it seems to be granted by frequent reference.

Comment author: wedrifid 21 October 2012 04:50:25PM 1 point [-]

Is "total utilitarianist" a thing (distinct from "total utilitarian)"?

Not that either I or google have heard of.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 October 2012 01:01:28PM *  1 point [-]

I'm not sure copies of the same person would count. Yes, they would diverge in a while, but one of them would still have very much less relative complexity given another than different people raised as different people would.