Deep in the implementation of my utility function, I found this heuristic: if you divide the set of people into reference classes via any natural classification scheme, no such reference class should act like a utility monster to any other reference class.
Well, if one “person” is a transhuman with the ability to experience more things in a minute than a present day human can in a lifetime, without the present day human’s functional limits on such things as how many pleasure-associated chemicals can be circulating through its system at a time, or how much it can care about a whole lot of things at once relative to a few things, then those are probably going to result in some highly relevant differences in their utility functions.
We may not be able to compare utility functions between humans particularly well, but we can compare the utility functions of humans to, say, jellyfish, and say that along important metrics, jellyfish can scarcely be said to have utility functions by comparison.
If it’s possible for a being to be to a human what a human is to a jellyfish in that respect, I think I’d rather be that sort of being.
Deep in the implementation of my utility function, I found this heuristic: if you divide the set of people into reference classes via any natural classification scheme, no such reference class should act like a utility monster to any other reference class.
What if some “people” can have unbounded utility functions, where other “people” cannot. Do you think it’s still appropriate to apply that heuristic?
Are you trying to compare utility functions between people?
Well, if one “person” is a transhuman with the ability to experience more things in a minute than a present day human can in a lifetime, without the present day human’s functional limits on such things as how many pleasure-associated chemicals can be circulating through its system at a time, or how much it can care about a whole lot of things at once relative to a few things, then those are probably going to result in some highly relevant differences in their utility functions.
We may not be able to compare utility functions between humans particularly well, but we can compare the utility functions of humans to, say, jellyfish, and say that along important metrics, jellyfish can scarcely be said to have utility functions by comparison.
If it’s possible for a being to be to a human what a human is to a jellyfish in that respect, I think I’d rather be that sort of being.