So you would prefer a world where everyone is maximally happy all the time but otherwise nothing is different?
I think this has way too many consequences to frame meaningfully as “but nothing otherwise is different.” Kind of like “everything is exactly the same except the polarity of gravity is reversed.” I can’t judge how much utility to assign to a world where everyone is maximally happy all the time but the world is otherwise just like ours, because I can’t even make sense of the notion.
If you assign constant marginal utility to increases in ice cream and assume that ice cream can be increased indefinitely while keeping everything else constant, then of course you can increase utility by continuing to add more ice cream, simply as a matter of basic math. But I would say that not only is it not a meaningful proposition, it’s not really illustrative of anything in particular save for how not to use mathematical models.
I think this has way too many consequences to frame meaningfully as “but nothing otherwise is different.” Kind of like “everything is exactly the same except the polarity of gravity is reversed.” I can’t judge how much utility to assign to a world where everyone is maximally happy all the time but the world is otherwise just like ours, because I can’t even make sense of the notion.
If you assign constant marginal utility to increases in ice cream and assume that ice cream can be increased indefinitely while keeping everything else constant, then of course you can increase utility by continuing to add more ice cream, simply as a matter of basic math. But I would say that not only is it not a meaningful proposition, it’s not really illustrative of anything in particular save for how not to use mathematical models.