Sales girl: We accounted for that as well! Let me ask you how much utility you assign to one hour of ultimate well-being™, where ‘ultimate’ means the best possible satisfaction of all desirable bodily sensations a human body and brain is capable of experiencing?
My entire life in your simulator might be of less utility than my life outside of the simulator because if, say, I was roughly utilitarian, the more moderate positive effect that my efforts had on the preference functions of a whole lot of people would be worth more than a huge increase that the simulator would have on my own preference function.
In all honesty, however, I would be really tempted. I’m also pretty sure that I wouldn’t have akrasia problems after turning the offer down. Curious how a counterfactual can have such an affect on your outlook, no? Perhaps there’s a way to take advantage of that.
My entire life in your simulator might be of less utility than my life outside of the simulator because if, say, I was roughly utilitarian, the more moderate positive effect that my efforts had on the preference functions of a whole lot of people would be worth more than a huge increase that the simulator would have on my own preference function.
In all honesty, however, I would be really tempted. I’m also pretty sure that I wouldn’t have akrasia problems after turning the offer down. Curious how a counterfactual can have such an affect on your outlook, no? Perhaps there’s a way to take advantage of that.