I think this is one of the legitimate conclusions you should make from torture vs dust specks. It’s not that your intuition is necessarily wrong (though it may be) but that a simple multiplicative may NOT accurately describe your utility function. You can’t choose torture based on simple addition but that doesn’t necessarily mean choosing torture isn’t what you should do given your UF
I don’t think it’s the specifics of the multiplicative accumulation of individual utilities that matters; just imagine that however I calculate the utility of torture and papercuts there is some lottery where I am VNM-indifferent between 10^10 papercuts and torture for 50 years. 10^10 + 1 papercuts would be too much and I would opt for torture; 50 years + 1 second of torture would be too much and I would opt for papercuts. However, given the VNM-indifferent choice, I would still have a preference for papercuts over torture because it maximizes the minimum individual utility while still maximizing overall utility. (-10^12 utility is the minimum individual utility when choosing torture, −100 utility is the minimum individual utility when choosing papercuts, total utility is −10^12 either way, average utility is −10^12 / (10^10 + 1) either way, so I am fairly certain the latter two are indifferent between the choices. If I’ve just made a math error, that would help alleviate my confusion.).
To me, at least, it seems like this preference is not captured by utilitarianism using VNM-utility. I think it’s almost possible to explain it in terms of negative utilitarianism but I don’t actually try to minimize overall harm, just minimize the greatest individual harm while keeping total or average utility maximized (or sufficiently close to maximal).
I think this is one of the legitimate conclusions you should make from torture vs dust specks. It’s not that your intuition is necessarily wrong (though it may be) but that a simple multiplicative may NOT accurately describe your utility function. You can’t choose torture based on simple addition but that doesn’t necessarily mean choosing torture isn’t what you should do given your UF
I don’t think it’s the specifics of the multiplicative accumulation of individual utilities that matters; just imagine that however I calculate the utility of torture and papercuts there is some lottery where I am VNM-indifferent between 10^10 papercuts and torture for 50 years. 10^10 + 1 papercuts would be too much and I would opt for torture; 50 years + 1 second of torture would be too much and I would opt for papercuts. However, given the VNM-indifferent choice, I would still have a preference for papercuts over torture because it maximizes the minimum individual utility while still maximizing overall utility. (-10^12 utility is the minimum individual utility when choosing torture, −100 utility is the minimum individual utility when choosing papercuts, total utility is −10^12 either way, average utility is −10^12 / (10^10 + 1) either way, so I am fairly certain the latter two are indifferent between the choices. If I’ve just made a math error, that would help alleviate my confusion.).
To me, at least, it seems like this preference is not captured by utilitarianism using VNM-utility. I think it’s almost possible to explain it in terms of negative utilitarianism but I don’t actually try to minimize overall harm, just minimize the greatest individual harm while keeping total or average utility maximized (or sufficiently close to maximal).