I like the exploration of ideas like this—thanks for that. I think this approach has some serious problems, though (note: all utilitarian calculations have serious problems—that criticism may be more general than helpful).
Where do you get this list? And how do you account for future unexpected experiences?
This is the biggest problem with this theory. It’s likely that some experiences are non-linear in utility per intensity. Or that you’d have to crank up some parts of the experience and not others. For instance, enjoying the contrast of bitter and fruity in a shot of espresso—there’s no way to scale the whole thing up 10x, you have to pick and choose what to intensify, and then your result is subject to those modeling choices. Also, why 10x rather than 0.1x, or 0x (direct comparison of experienced to not-experienced).
What is your standing to judge your imagined version of someone’s experience? Maybe your preferences are different enough from the subject’s that you’re simply wrong in your comparison.
What does it matter if some experience-moments are negative value? I’ll stipulate that my life contains MANY moments that not only would I not want to magnify 10x, I would rather have skipped them entirely. I don’t have a quantification of those moments, nor the joyous ones that I would happily keep (some of which I’d magnify, some perhaps not), so I don’t have a solution to the underlying aggregation problem over my single life, let alone a population, let alone a hypothetical/future population.
It’s likely that some experiences are non-linear in utility per intensity.
I imagined something like having fun with my friends, or watching a funny movie, while feeling a mild pain in some part of my body. As long as I can mostly ignore it, the experience is pleasant on average. Now multiply everything by 10, and I will not be able to enjoy the fun, because I will focus on the pain.
Yeah, the proposal is to multiply the experience, not the inputs. It’s just sometimes difficult to imagine.
What is your standing to judge your imagined version of someone’s experience? Maybe your preferences are different enough from the subject’s that you’re simply wrong in your comparison.
You’re right and I should have said “imagine the point at which they are indifferent”, “would they prefer the 10x experience or the 1x experience”, etc. Imagining whether I would prefer it could be a decent approximation of their preferences, though.
It’s likely that some experiences are non-linear in utility per intensity.
In the post, I defined intensity as linearly proportional to utility. If you think wording it as “intensity” is misleading because what we generally think of as “experience intensity” isn’t linearly proportional to utility, then I agree, but can’t think of a better term to use.
Or that you’d have to crank up some parts of the experience and not others. For instance, enjoying the contrast of bitter and fruity in a shot of espresso—there’s no way to scale the whole thing up 10x, you have to pick and choose what to intensify, and then your result is subject to those modeling choices.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying that the experience of enjoying the contrast of bitter and fruity can be modeled as the individual experiences “bitter 1, bitter 2, bitter 3, … ,fruity 1, fruity 2, fruity 3, …” and the total utility of the 10x scaled experience depends on which ones you group together when summing the utilities. For example, if your “utility groups” are bitter 1 + fruity 1, bitter 2 + fruity 2, etc., it comes out with higher utility than if you group them as bitter 1 +bitter 2 + etc and fruity 1 + fruity 2 + etc, because the specific combination of bitter and fruity is what makes it a good experience.
I disagree that the individual experiences are bitter 1, bitter 2, …, fruity 1, fruity 2, … ; I feel like it should be more like bitter-fruity 1, bitter-fruity 2, …, bitter 1, bitter 2, …, fruity 1, fruity 2, … The combination of bitter and fruity (“bitter-fruity”) is a distinct individual experience in the set of experiences occurring at that moment, and in that set might also be included individual “bitter” and “fruity” experiences. Here, we can just intensify each individual experience by 10 (i.e. multiply the utility of the experience by 10 while keeping it as the same “type” of experience) and sum their utilities.
Also, why 10x rather than 0.1x, or 0x (direct comparison of experienced to not-experienced).
I don’t really know what it would mean to prefer to “not experience” something. You’re always experiencing something; your baseline mental state is an experience. If your baseline mental state has exactly 0 utility, this would work, but your baseline mental state isn’t necessarily exactly 0 utility. If “not experiencing” something means shaving that much time off the rest of your life, this still feels like a conceptually weaker version of a “preference”. When comparing two experiences, I can imagine being on experience 1, then deciding I want to switch to experience 2, then actually deciding experience 1 is better, etc., until some sort of equilibrium is reached and I make up my mind. (Keep in mind that how tired you are of the experience is itself part of the experience, and held constant, so you wouldn’t keep jumping back and forth endlessly.) Theoretically, the analogous way to compare an experience with the absence of experience would be jumping between [your entire mind being turned off except for the part that allows you to think and make decisions] and the experience, but that’s a harder thought experiment to have than imagining jumping between two different experiences.
I hadn’t thought of comparing 1x to 0.1x; that’s a good idea, and I don’t object to it. I imagine 1x to 0.1x is more useful if each individual experience has a lot of utility (or disutility), and 1x to 10x is more useful if each individual experience only has a little utility (or disutility).
(I will respond to 3) and 4) tomorrow, it’s getting late and I should sleep)
First, I want to make sure we’re separating the validity of the model itself from concerns with applying it. I’ll try to be clear about which one I’m talking about for each part.
I’ll respond to each number in a separate reply because the format of the conversation will be a mess otherwise. Starting with 1):
Where do you get this list?
Could you be more specific? Is this question centered around how I know what other people are thinking, or how to separate a whole experience into individual experiences ?
And how do you account for future unexpected experiences?
I don’t know how to respond to this. What part of the model depends on accounting for unexpected future experiences? If you’re asking generally how I would predict future experiences, I don’t have a good answer, but this seems both separate from the philosophical model itself and not an objection to the application of this specific philosophical model (it applies to all experience-based consequentialism).
I like the exploration of ideas like this—thanks for that. I think this approach has some serious problems, though (note: all utilitarian calculations have serious problems—that criticism may be more general than helpful).
Where do you get this list? And how do you account for future unexpected experiences?
This is the biggest problem with this theory. It’s likely that some experiences are non-linear in utility per intensity. Or that you’d have to crank up some parts of the experience and not others. For instance, enjoying the contrast of bitter and fruity in a shot of espresso—there’s no way to scale the whole thing up 10x, you have to pick and choose what to intensify, and then your result is subject to those modeling choices. Also, why 10x rather than 0.1x, or 0x (direct comparison of experienced to not-experienced).
What is your standing to judge your imagined version of someone’s experience? Maybe your preferences are different enough from the subject’s that you’re simply wrong in your comparison.
What does it matter if some experience-moments are negative value? I’ll stipulate that my life contains MANY moments that not only would I not want to magnify 10x, I would rather have skipped them entirely. I don’t have a quantification of those moments, nor the joyous ones that I would happily keep (some of which I’d magnify, some perhaps not), so I don’t have a solution to the underlying aggregation problem over my single life, let alone a population, let alone a hypothetical/future population.
I imagined something like having fun with my friends, or watching a funny movie, while feeling a mild pain in some part of my body. As long as I can mostly ignore it, the experience is pleasant on average. Now multiply everything by 10, and I will not be able to enjoy the fun, because I will focus on the pain.
Yeah, the proposal is to multiply the experience, not the inputs. It’s just sometimes difficult to imagine.
Responding to 3):
You’re right and I should have said “imagine the point at which they are indifferent”, “would they prefer the 10x experience or the 1x experience”, etc. Imagining whether I would prefer it could be a decent approximation of their preferences, though.
Responding to 2):
In the post, I defined intensity as linearly proportional to utility. If you think wording it as “intensity” is misleading because what we generally think of as “experience intensity” isn’t linearly proportional to utility, then I agree, but can’t think of a better term to use.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying that the experience of enjoying the contrast of bitter and fruity can be modeled as the individual experiences “bitter 1, bitter 2, bitter 3, … ,fruity 1, fruity 2, fruity 3, …” and the total utility of the 10x scaled experience depends on which ones you group together when summing the utilities. For example, if your “utility groups” are bitter 1 + fruity 1, bitter 2 + fruity 2, etc., it comes out with higher utility than if you group them as bitter 1 +bitter 2 + etc and fruity 1 + fruity 2 + etc, because the specific combination of bitter and fruity is what makes it a good experience.
I disagree that the individual experiences are bitter 1, bitter 2, …, fruity 1, fruity 2, … ; I feel like it should be more like bitter-fruity 1, bitter-fruity 2, …, bitter 1, bitter 2, …, fruity 1, fruity 2, … The combination of bitter and fruity (“bitter-fruity”) is a distinct individual experience in the set of experiences occurring at that moment, and in that set might also be included individual “bitter” and “fruity” experiences. Here, we can just intensify each individual experience by 10 (i.e. multiply the utility of the experience by 10 while keeping it as the same “type” of experience) and sum their utilities.
I don’t really know what it would mean to prefer to “not experience” something. You’re always experiencing something; your baseline mental state is an experience. If your baseline mental state has exactly 0 utility, this would work, but your baseline mental state isn’t necessarily exactly 0 utility. If “not experiencing” something means shaving that much time off the rest of your life, this still feels like a conceptually weaker version of a “preference”. When comparing two experiences, I can imagine being on experience 1, then deciding I want to switch to experience 2, then actually deciding experience 1 is better, etc., until some sort of equilibrium is reached and I make up my mind. (Keep in mind that how tired you are of the experience is itself part of the experience, and held constant, so you wouldn’t keep jumping back and forth endlessly.) Theoretically, the analogous way to compare an experience with the absence of experience would be jumping between [your entire mind being turned off except for the part that allows you to think and make decisions] and the experience, but that’s a harder thought experiment to have than imagining jumping between two different experiences.
I hadn’t thought of comparing 1x to 0.1x; that’s a good idea, and I don’t object to it. I imagine 1x to 0.1x is more useful if each individual experience has a lot of utility (or disutility), and 1x to 10x is more useful if each individual experience only has a little utility (or disutility).
(I will respond to 3) and 4) tomorrow, it’s getting late and I should sleep)
First, I want to make sure we’re separating the validity of the model itself from concerns with applying it. I’ll try to be clear about which one I’m talking about for each part.
I’ll respond to each number in a separate reply because the format of the conversation will be a mess otherwise. Starting with 1):
Could you be more specific? Is this question centered around how I know what other people are thinking, or how to separate a whole experience into individual experiences ?
I don’t know how to respond to this. What part of the model depends on accounting for unexpected future experiences? If you’re asking generally how I would predict future experiences, I don’t have a good answer, but this seems both separate from the philosophical model itself and not an objection to the application of this specific philosophical model (it applies to all experience-based consequentialism).