That solution doesn’t work. If consuming resources is counted as “harmful to others”, then you end up saying that it should starve (with no good distinction with which to say that others shouldn’t). If consuming resources doesn’t count as harmful to others, then you end up giving it the whole universe. You want to give it some, but not all, of the resources. If you try to use references to property distinctions inside the utility function to do that, you’ve disqualified your utility function from the role of distinguishing good and bad legal and economic systems, and epistemology explodes.
You want to give it some, but not all, of the resources.
Right, one has to arbitrate between harmful components of various utility monsters (UM) (which most people are in the approximation of limited resources) somehow. But you should not need to kill or torture people just because the UM enjoys it a lot.
Now, how to optimize harmful preferences? If there are enough resources to saturate every non-UM utility, then there is no problem. If there isn’t enough, the linear programming approach would reduce every non-UM to “life barely worth celebrating” and give the rest to the hungriest UM. Whether this is a good solution, I do not know.
If you try to use references to property distinctions inside the utility function to do that, you’ve disqualified your utility function from the role of distinguishing good and bad legal and economic systems, and epistemology explodes.
I did not follow that, feel free to give an example.
But you should not need to kill or torture people just because the UM enjoys it a lot.
Again, I agree, but I did not mention that in the OP because many people would not have read our previous discussion, and might have been confused when I suddenly went off on a tangent about how “malicious preferences shouldn’t count” in an essay on a totally different subject.
The relevant question then, is how should we split resources between the monster and between other people when attempting to satisfy preferences that do not involve harming other as an end in itself.
If there are enough resources to saturate every non-UM utility, then there is no problem.
I know I was the one who started using the word “saturate” in the first place, but after some thought “satisfice” is a much better approximation of what I meant.
I did not follow that, feel free to give an example.
I think he is arguing that someone might try to get out of giving the monster resources by claiming that the other people in the world own their share of resources, and that it is bad to take private property. The problem with this is that since property is a legal construct, one can simply argue that property rights should be abolished for the Monster’s sake. If one tries to claim that property rights somehow transcend other utility concerns that means your utility function does not make any distinction between what kinds of property rights are good and which are bad,
I don’t know why this makes epistemology explode either.
Also, I don’t think you ever made such an argument in the first place, he was probably just mentioning it for completeness’ sake.
That solution doesn’t work. If consuming resources is counted as “harmful to others”, then you end up saying that it should starve (with no good distinction with which to say that others shouldn’t). If consuming resources doesn’t count as harmful to others, then you end up giving it the whole universe. You want to give it some, but not all, of the resources. If you try to use references to property distinctions inside the utility function to do that, you’ve disqualified your utility function from the role of distinguishing good and bad legal and economic systems, and epistemology explodes.
Right, one has to arbitrate between harmful components of various utility monsters (UM) (which most people are in the approximation of limited resources) somehow. But you should not need to kill or torture people just because the UM enjoys it a lot.
Now, how to optimize harmful preferences? If there are enough resources to saturate every non-UM utility, then there is no problem. If there isn’t enough, the linear programming approach would reduce every non-UM to “life barely worth celebrating” and give the rest to the hungriest UM. Whether this is a good solution, I do not know.
I did not follow that, feel free to give an example.
Again, I agree, but I did not mention that in the OP because many people would not have read our previous discussion, and might have been confused when I suddenly went off on a tangent about how “malicious preferences shouldn’t count” in an essay on a totally different subject.
The relevant question then, is how should we split resources between the monster and between other people when attempting to satisfy preferences that do not involve harming other as an end in itself.
I know I was the one who started using the word “saturate” in the first place, but after some thought “satisfice” is a much better approximation of what I meant.
I think he is arguing that someone might try to get out of giving the monster resources by claiming that the other people in the world own their share of resources, and that it is bad to take private property. The problem with this is that since property is a legal construct, one can simply argue that property rights should be abolished for the Monster’s sake. If one tries to claim that property rights somehow transcend other utility concerns that means your utility function does not make any distinction between what kinds of property rights are good and which are bad,
I don’t know why this makes epistemology explode either.
Also, I don’t think you ever made such an argument in the first place, he was probably just mentioning it for completeness’ sake.
How does this have anything to do with epistemology?