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wedrifid comments on Open thread, August 5-11, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: David_Gerard 05 August 2013 06:50AM

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Comment author: Adele_L 05 August 2013 10:01:03PM 1 point [-]

I haven't explored that idea; can you be more specific about what this idea might bring to the table?

I'm utterly convinced that the happiness of some people ought to count negatively

Are you sure? You believe there are some people for which the morally right thing to do is to inflect as much misery and suffering as you can, keeping them alive so you can torture them forever, and there is not necessarily even a benefit to yourself or anyone else to doing this?

Comment author: wedrifid 06 August 2013 06:53:47AM *  1 point [-]

Are you sure? You believe there are some people for which the morally right thing to do is to inflect as much misery and suffering as you can, keeping them alive so you can torture them forever, and there is not necessarily even a benefit to yourself or anyone else to doing this?

The negative utility need not be boundless or even monotonic. A coherent preference system could count a modest amount of misery experienced by people fitting certain criteria to be positive while extreme misery and torture of the same individual is evaluated negatively.

Comment author: mwengler 07 August 2013 03:32:31PM 0 points [-]

The negative utility need not be boundless or even monotonic.

I also will upvote posts that have been downvoted too much, even if I wouldn't have upvoted them if they were at 0.