Comment by pandamodium on Circular Altruism · 2010-12-02T13:29:53.899Z · LW · GW

This whole argument only washes if you assume that things work "normally" (eg like they do in the real field, eg are subject to the axioms that make addition/subtraction/calculus work). In fact we know that utility doesn't behave normally when considering multiple agents (as proved by arrows impossibility theorm), so the "correct" answer is that we can't have a true pareto-optimal solution to the eye-dust-vs-torture problem. There is no reason why you couldn't contstruct a ring/field/group for utility which produced some of the solutions the OP dismisses, and in fact IMO those would be better representations of human utility than a straight normal interpretation.