and yes, as soon as ends justify means, you do get Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, who were all striving for good consequences......
As soon as? That’s a very strong statement.
I don’t think utilitarianism suggests that “the ends justify the means” in the way that you are claiming—a more utilitarian view would be “all of the effects of the means justify the means” i.e. side effects are relevant.
You can say anything, but Graham’s number is very large; if the disutility of an air molecule slamming into your eye were 1 over Graham’s number, enough air pressure to kill you would have negligible disutility.
If your utility function ceases to correspond to utility at extreme values, isn’t it more of an approximation of utility than actual utility? Sure, you don’t need a model that works at the extremes—but when a model does hold for extreme values, that’s generally a good sign for the accuracy of the model.
If utility is to be compared relative to lifetime utility, i.e. as (LifetimeUtility + x / LifetimeUtility), doesn’t that assign higher impact to five seconds of pain for a twenty-year old who will die at 40 than to a twenty-year old who will die at 120? Does that make sense?
Eliezer’s point does not seem to me predicated on the existence of such a value; I see no need to assume multiplication has been broken.