Find out how utilitarian you are - a mega thread of philosophy polls

post by spencerg · 2022-09-10T14:05:35.600Z · LW · GW · 3 comments

This is a link post for https://twitter.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1568595511522852871

Contents

3 comments

I created a mega thread of philosophy polls to help you find out how utilitarian you are:

https://twitter.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1568595511522852871

 

It includes thought experiments related to:

3 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by Rafael Harth (sil-ver) · 2022-09-10T14:43:40.877Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

One comment: taken literally, this description

(note: I use the phrase "net happiness" to mean the sum of all happiness in the future minus the sum of all suffering in the future)

completely eliminates second-order effects (and I answered accordingly). However, I suspect many people will consider second-order effects anyway. If something is sufficiently strange, I think explicitly stating it, even in unambiguous language, it is often not enough; you have to make it super-extra clear.

Replies from: 272314
↑ comment by 272314 · 2022-09-11T08:32:07.646Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Agreed. Take the unhappy pregnant parent raising the hypothetically future happy child - unfortunately I just couldn't decouple this. 

As an unhappy parent, my unhappiness gets transmitted to my children, and their unhappiness feeds back to me in a negative feedback loop. We're all unhappy. (And, indeed, the literature on postpartum depression and its resultant effects on children are quite clear on this as well - it's not just my personal experience.)

My rationalisation of this is that I'm a negative utilitarian and I'm not a longtermist - I don't think the future child's theoretical happiness can outweigh the the mother's present unhappiness. 

But in actuality I think it's probably a decoupling issue. 

comment by JBlack · 2022-09-14T02:37:14.902Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It looks like a very specific form of utilitarianism: something like linear state sum hedonic utilitarianism.