Comment author: Giles 24 April 2011 11:18:13PM 1 point [-]

Your suggestion has a possible "remembering just how good my favourite unhealthy food tastes" counter-effect.

Other than that, it sounds like a pretty slam-dunk test, for any particular individual, as to whether the effect I'm speculating about is actually real.

Anyone want to commit to trying this? (improving diet isn't a goal for me right now unfortunately)

Comment author: TGM 29 September 2013 06:08:13PM 2 points [-]

That people buy more, less healthy food when they are hungry is pretty well backed up, I understand. (Googling gives this right away)

Your suggestion has a possible "remembering just how good my favourite unhealthy food tastes" counter-effect.

My experience is that how food tastes changes massively depending on my hunger, so you need to bear in mind that "how good my favourite food tastes" will likely be "not very" when you've just eaten.

For example, I play sport for about 3 hours on Sundays, and immediately after (before leaving the pitches) I drink a litre of milk, mixed with milk powder (to make double strength milk), mixed with chocolate Ovaltine powder. It tastes great to me at that point in time. I tried it before a practise once, and it was just awful.

Comment author: AndHisHorse 17 August 2013 02:20:23AM -1 points [-]

I do not see a contradiction in claiming that a) utility monsters do not exist and b) under utilitarianism, it is correct to kill an arbitrarily large number of nematodes to save one human.

The solution to this issue is to reject the idea of a continuous scale of "utility capability", under which nematodes can feel a tiny amount of utility, humans can feel a moderate amount, and some superhuman utility monster can feel a tremendous amount. Rather, we can (and, I believe, should) reduce it to two classes: agents and objects.

An agent, such as a human or a utility monster, is a creature which is sentient and judged by society to be worthy of moral consideration, including it in the social utility function. All agents are considered equal, with their individual utility units converted to some social standard. For example, Agent Alpha receives 100 Alpha-Utils from the average day, where Agent Beta receives 200 Beta-Utils from the average day. Both of these are converted into Society-Utils - let's say 10 Society-Utils - making an exchange rate of 10 Alpha:Society and 20 Beta:Society.

This is similar to how currency is exchanged. Assuming some reference point, perhaps an event which society deems is equally valuable for all agents (that is, society values it equally regardless of which agent experiences it), there exists a Utility Economy, in which there exists a comparative advantage; Agent Alpha and Agent Beta serve each other, producing more Society-Utils by trading than either could alone.

Left to the side are objects, such as nematodes. Objects are of value only to the extent to which they feature in an agent's utility function; for the purpose of ethical consideration, we consider objects to have no utility function. Therefore, it would be proper to kill nematodes to save humans - unless the side effects from killing so many nematodes began to threaten more humans than it would save. Similarly, animal protection laws would exist not because of any right of the animal, but rather the strong preferences of humans to avoid animal cruelty. This is consistent with the coexistence of factory farming and animal cruelty laws; humans don't much care about cows, but will fight to defend their pets (and creatures like them).

Of course, to some extent this is passing the buck to the "Utility Economy" to set fair rates, but I believe that a society could cobble together a reasonable exchange in which, for example, nobody's life would be valued trivially.

Comment author: TGM 18 August 2013 10:42:16PM 4 points [-]

All agents are considered equal,

If I contract a neurodegenerative illness, which will gradually reduce my cognitive function, until I end up in a vegetative state, do I retain agent-ness throughout, or at some point lose equal footing with healthy me in one go? Neither seems a good description of my slow slide from fully human to vegetable.

with their individual utility units converted to some social standard. For example, Agent Alpha receives 100 Alpha-Utils from the average day, where Agent Beta receives 200 Beta-Utils from the average day. Both of these are converted into Society-Utils - let's say 10 Society-Utils - making an exchange rate of 10 Alpha:Society and 20 Beta:Society.

What is an "average day"? My average day probably has greater utility than that of a captive of a sadistic gang...

Comment author: Jiro 17 August 2013 01:23:48AM 3 points [-]

Removing that qualification does banish the utility monster. If the utility monster gets greater utility from dollars than someone else (let's say nematodes), but is still subject to diminishing marginal returns (at a slower rate than nematodes), then the utilitarian result is to start giving dollars to the utility monster until its utility-per-dollar has diminished enough to match the starting utility-per-dollar of the nematodes, and then to give to both the utility monster and the nematodes in a proportion which keeps them at the same rate. The "utility monster" has ceased to be a utility monster because it no longer gets everything. It still gets more, of course, but that's the equivalent of deciding that the starving person gets the food before the full person.

Comment author: TGM 18 August 2013 10:29:35PM 1 point [-]

I want to criticise either the idea that diminishing returns is important, or, at least, that dollar values make sense for talking about them.

Suppose we have a monster who likes to eat. Each serving of food is just as tasty as the previous, but he still gets diminishing returns on the dollar, because the marginal cost of the servings goes up.

We also have nematodes, who like to eat, but not as much. They never get a look in, because as the monster eats, they also suffer diminished utilons per dollar.

So the monster is serving the 'purpose' of the utility monster, but still has diminishing returns on the dollar. If we redefine diminishing returns to be on something else, I'm not sure it could be well justified or immune to this issue.

And, although humans are not an example of this sort of monster, the human race certainly is.

Comment author: RomeoStevens 05 May 2013 08:58:05PM *  1 point [-]

Floss your damn teeth ffs.

Comment author: TGM 05 May 2013 11:05:50PM *  1 point [-]

Do you have a more original source. I've heard about this, and would be interested to know if/how a causal link was established between flossing and heart disease

Comment author: TGM 18 February 2013 08:38:37PM *  8 points [-]

A concern regarding this kind of test when applied to groups (Christians vs Atheists, for instance) rather than individuals is that one umbrella term may take more views than another, making the guessing game more/less tricky.

Nevertheless, this is a neat idea, particularly for particular people rather than groups as a whole.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Random LW-parodying Statement Generator
Comment author: gwern 12 September 2012 05:03:20PM *  4 points [-]

I am shocked that (according to Wei Dai's page), this is now my most popular comment ever (with the runnerup at 39 points). It's not that funny an insult of Robin, guys.

Comment author: TGM 13 September 2012 10:35:09PM 1 point [-]

At the time of writing, it had more upvotes than the OP... surely that's not right?

Comment author: TGM 13 September 2012 10:32:08PM 4 points [-]

The affective death spiral is isomorphic to this thread.

Comment author: TGM 13 September 2012 10:30:28PM 3 points [-]

The map is the mind-killer

Seems Legit

Comment author: [deleted] 08 September 2012 02:26:59PM -2 points [-]

And they still dodge taxes now, even when the rates have been slashed into oblivion. If anything they only seem more determined to do it.

Comment author: TGM 08 September 2012 02:51:13PM *  4 points [-]

Mindkiller Alert!

The yield of a tax at 0% is 0. The yield of tax at 100% is also close to zero, as nobody will do anything to earn money that will be taxed at 100% (i.e. ensure all earnings dodge that tax). Therefore the set of policies that give maximum tax yield do not have a tax rate of 100%, and increasing tax rates beyond that reduce tax yield.

This analysis is subject to some caveats, and where the optimal rate is is a very complicated and politically charged question, of course, and this is already completely off topic.

Comment author: TGM 08 September 2012 02:32:45PM *  4 points [-]

I suspect what you mean by desire utilitarianism is what wikipedia calls preference utilitarianism, which I believe is the standard term.

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