Open thread, August 5-11, 2013

David_Gerard

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Some people ought to have pain inflicted on them until their utility functions become sensible in the face of the threat of more pain from the same source for the same reason. This need not take the form of limitless pain: the marginal utility curve could easily fall off really fast. Not having to deal with such people will make lots of people very happy, and them in the long run happy as well. See: sociopaths and ostensibly this guy.

You might want to distinguish

Wishing that person X would behave otherwise
Being glad if person X suffers
Believing that making person X suffer will cause them to behave otherwise
The world will be a better place if person X would behave otherwise
The world will be a better place if person X suffers

Plenty of people seem glad to hear about other people suffering regardless of whether it has any plausible chances of causing behavior change. Just look at any countries that hate each other (Japan vs. pretty much the rest of East Asia), political opponents (... (read more)

6Emile13y

"Beatings will continue until morale improves"

0Adele Lopez13y

So the positive utility outweighs the negative utility of the punishment, which is at least plausible, and makes sense under standard forms of utilitarianism. But if their utility function really should be counted negatively, this would just be an incidental fact.