“Better person” here means “person who maximizes average utility better”.
Understood, though I was confused for a moment there. When other people say “better person”, they usually mean something like “a person who is more helpful and kinder to others”, not merely “a happier person”, though obviously those categories do overlap.
I think that by “maximizes average utility” AspiringKnitter meant utility averaged over every human being—so helpfulness and kindness to others is by necessity included.
Since a utility function is only defined up to affine transformations with positive scale factor, what does it mean to sum several utility functions together? (Sure someone has already thought about that, but I can’t think of anything sensible.)
I think that by “maximizes average utility” AspiringKnitter meant utility averaged over every human being—so helpfulness and kindness to others is by necessity included.
Since a utility function is only defined up to affine transformations with positive scale factor, what does it mean to sum several utility functions together? (Sure someone has already thought about that, but I can’t think of anything sensible.)
Yeah, that’s a problem with many formulations of utilitarianism.
Surely someone must have proposed some solution(s)?
Weight it by net-worth?
OIC, that would make more sense than what I was thinking; my apologies to AspiringKnitter if I got this wrong.