From: Stuart Armstrong (dragondreaming@googlemail.com)
Date: Sat May 10 2008 - 02:09:42 MDT
> You originally proposed giving greater (perhaps infinite) weight to
> negative utility than positive utility. By this reasoning, you could
> never test any new drugs because of the possibility they may cause harm.
> You could not engage in trade because the negative utility of the payer
> exceeds the positive utility of the recipient. I know you could make
> exceptions in these cases, but there are many other examples.
I grant the point about the new drug tests (holding out the hope that
my design of utility function will encourage non-human tests to be
developed. In the meantimes, I'd be in favour of paying people above
the market rate to take part in them - and I already know the moral
and practical objection to that position). I don't get the trade
argument - trade only happens if both parties get positive utility out
of it.
Maybe I should have emphasised that I was focusing on actual pain, not
just negative utility. If losing a million pounds will make little
difference to your happiness beyond some initial anguish, then I see
nothing wrong with that happening (my research into the happiness is a
bit rusty, but what I read a few years back when I was engaged in it,
was that for most people, as long as you draw the salary of at least a
medical doctor, your income is uncorrelated with your happiness). It
is the really damaging suffering and death that I think should be
over-emphasised, and the risk of those.
And yes, there are problems with my approach (though I don't count
preference reversal as a problem). But it still seems, to me, to be
advantageous over the alternatives.
I've cost a post on "Rights" that I'll post soon; it will have a more
general case of non-linear utility.
If you want to continue the discussion, maybe better to take it off
the mailing list? And return with the conclusions?
Stuart
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:01:02 MDT