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

by spencerg
10th Sep 2022
1 min read
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This is a linkpost for https://twitter.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1568595511522852871
PhilosophyUtilitarianismWorld Optimization
Frontpage

8

Find out how utilitarian you are - a mega thread of philosophy polls
3Rafael Harth
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2JBlack
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[-]Rafael Harth3y30

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.

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[-]2723143y10

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. 

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[-]JBlack3y20

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

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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:

  • Equality
  • Delusion
  • Preferences
  • The Repugnant Conclusion
  • Love
  • Theft
  • Shutting up and multiplying
  • Complexity
  • Abortion
  • Heaven lottery
  • Avoiding hell
  • Longevity
  • Animal suffering
  • Replacing beings