To put differently, given two actions A & B with expected utilities U & V, you should choose A over B iff U > V. Only the relative ordering of U & V is meaningful, not the absolute difference (the utility function can be scaled arbitrarily anyway).
Good point. I guess you could rephrase some of the existential angst over insignificance as despairing at the tiny amounts of utility we can manipulate given a utility function scaled to the entire world/​universe/​whatever.
To put differently, given two actions A & B with expected utilities U & V, you should choose A over B iff U > V. Only the relative ordering of U & V is meaningful, not the absolute difference (the utility function can be scaled arbitrarily anyway).
Good point. I guess you could rephrase some of the existential angst over insignificance as despairing at the tiny amounts of utility we can manipulate given a utility function scaled to the entire world/​universe/​whatever.