So, if additive utility functions are naive, does that mean I can swap around your preferences at random like jerking around a puppet on a string, just by having a sealed box in the next galaxy over where I keep a googol individuals who are already being tortured for fifty years, or already getting dust specks in their eyes, or already being poked with a stick, etc., which your actions cannot possibly affect one way or the other?
It seems I can arbitrarily vary your “non-additive” utilities, and hence your priorities, simply by messing with the numbers of existing people having various experiences in a sealed box in a galaxy a googol light years away.
This seems remarkably reminiscent of E. T. Jaynes’s experience with the “sophisticated” philosophers who sniffed that of course naive Bayesian probability theory had to be abandoned in the face of paradox #239; which paradox Jaynes would proceed to slice into confetti using “naive” Bayesian theory but with this time with rigorous math instead of the various mistakes the “sophisticated” philosophers had made.
There are reasons for preferring certain kinds of simplicity.
So, if additive utility functions are naive, does that mean I can swap around your preferences at random like jerking around a puppet on a string, just by having a sealed box in the next galaxy over where I keep a googol individuals who are already being tortured for fifty years, or already getting dust specks in their eyes, or already being poked with a stick, etc., which your actions cannot possibly affect one way or the other?
It seems I can arbitrarily vary your “non-additive” utilities, and hence your priorities, simply by messing with the numbers of existing people having various experiences in a sealed box in a galaxy a googol light years away.
This seems remarkably reminiscent of E. T. Jaynes’s experience with the “sophisticated” philosophers who sniffed that of course naive Bayesian probability theory had to be abandoned in the face of paradox #239; which paradox Jaynes would proceed to slice into confetti using “naive” Bayesian theory but with this time with rigorous math instead of the various mistakes the “sophisticated” philosophers had made.
There are reasons for preferring certain kinds of simplicity.