I can find one discussion where, when the question of bounded utility functions came up, Eliezer responded, “[To avert a certain problem] the bound would also have to be substantially less than 3^^^^3.”—but this indicates a misunderstanding of the idea of utility, because utility functions can be arbitrarily (positively) rescaled or recentered. Individual utility “numbers” are not meaningful; only ratios of utility differences.
I think he was assuming a natural scale. After all, you can just pick some everyday-sized utility difference to use as your unit, and measure everytihng on that scale. It wouldn’t really matter what utility difference you pick as long as it is a natural size, since multiplying by 3^^^3 is easily enough for the argument to go through.
I think he was assuming a natural scale. After all, you can just pick some everyday-sized utility difference to use as your unit, and measure everytihng on that scale. It wouldn’t really matter what utility difference you pick as long as it is a natural size, since multiplying by 3^^^3 is easily enough for the argument to go through.