It’s not clear to me that one can’t be a utilitarian without agreeing that utility is additive (at least, additive in that manner). Consequentialism makes way more sense to me than deontology or virtue ethics (i.e. “what’s the point of deontology or virtue ethics if it doesn’t give better results?”), but I not only remain completely unconvinced by the arguments for Torture (that I’ve seen, anyway), but also think that Eliezer’s choice of Torture contradicts some of his other posts. But this is probably not the place to have that discussion.
I think Torture vs Dust Specks is really just Eliezer being coy about prioritarianism, as an analogous issue not known by that name emerges from prioritarian maths.
Could you clarify what you mean when you say that Eliezer is “being coy about” prioritarianism?
As for me, I’d never heard of prioritarianism before; having just read the wikipedia article (which does have some style disclaimers and “citation needed”s, so perhaps is not the ideal source), I don’t think it addresses either of my objections. It does at least attempt to capture some of my intuitions about the Specks vs. Torture case.
It’s not clear to me that one can’t be a utilitarian without agreeing that utility is additive (at least, additive in that manner). Consequentialism makes way more sense to me than deontology or virtue ethics (i.e. “what’s the point of deontology or virtue ethics if it doesn’t give better results?”), but I not only remain completely unconvinced by the arguments for Torture (that I’ve seen, anyway), but also think that Eliezer’s choice of Torture contradicts some of his other posts. But this is probably not the place to have that discussion.
I think Torture vs Dust Specks is really just Eliezer being coy about prioritarianism, as an analogous issue not known by that name emerges from prioritarian maths.
Could you clarify what you mean when you say that Eliezer is “being coy about” prioritarianism?
As for me, I’d never heard of prioritarianism before; having just read the wikipedia article (which does have some style disclaimers and “citation needed”s, so perhaps is not the ideal source), I don’t think it addresses either of my objections. It does at least attempt to capture some of my intuitions about the Specks vs. Torture case.