Measuring utility is an unsolved, and probably unsolvable, problem. It’s hard to say that someone who values the cultural continuity and linguistic diversity of keeping multiple languages alive is wrong about that value, only that I don’t share it.
How you aggregate stated or inferred values across different beings is the next level of unsolved (and IMO unsolvable) problem for Utilitiarianism. Maybe they DO value that highly, but you should devalue their utility compared to some other person’s desires.
To me this sound suspiciously like the “Fallacy of Grey”.
The Sophisticate: “The world isn’t black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It’s all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else.”
The Zetet: “Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view . . .”
Close, but not quite. There well may be colors and gradients, but we’re all very nearsighted and can’t tell what anyone else is seeing, and there’s no photography or ability to share the experiences and intuitions. There is no authority to tell us, no way to be sure that what we think is important is what matters to somebody else.
Measuring utility is an unsolved, and probably unsolvable, problem. It’s hard to say that someone who values the cultural continuity and linguistic diversity of keeping multiple languages alive is wrong about that value, only that I don’t share it.
How you aggregate stated or inferred values across different beings is the next level of unsolved (and IMO unsolvable) problem for Utilitiarianism. Maybe they DO value that highly, but you should devalue their utility compared to some other person’s desires.
To me this sound suspiciously like the “Fallacy of Grey”.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallacy-of-gray
Close, but not quite. There well may be colors and gradients, but we’re all very nearsighted and can’t tell what anyone else is seeing, and there’s no photography or ability to share the experiences and intuitions. There is no authority to tell us, no way to be sure that what we think is important is what matters to somebody else.