Eliezer, I said “It looks to me like...” to indicate a very subjective impression based on the text of your post. If it wasn’t true, that’s fine.
In that case, though, I don’t see why your conclusion in favor of average utilitarianism isn’t just as much a violation of Egan’s Law (to the extent that there is such a law) as anything I said. An illustration of this is Michael’s Vassar’s point that your claim about death was made precisely in order to move away from the counter intuitive implications of average utilitarianism, more towards the position of total utilitarianism.
Let’s suppose that you are the only person in the world. Without talking about death, if you had the power to create a universe, would you rather create a universe with 5 people in it (including you) who each had 149,146.2414 degrees of happiness, or one with 5 billion people in it, each with 149,146.2413 degrees of happiness?
(These “degrees” of happiness are simply an arbitrary measure in order to make my point, much like in the torture and dust specks discussion.)
Eliezer, I said “It looks to me like...” to indicate a very subjective impression based on the text of your post. If it wasn’t true, that’s fine.
In that case, though, I don’t see why your conclusion in favor of average utilitarianism isn’t just as much a violation of Egan’s Law (to the extent that there is such a law) as anything I said. An illustration of this is Michael’s Vassar’s point that your claim about death was made precisely in order to move away from the counter intuitive implications of average utilitarianism, more towards the position of total utilitarianism.
Let’s suppose that you are the only person in the world. Without talking about death, if you had the power to create a universe, would you rather create a universe with 5 people in it (including you) who each had 149,146.2414 degrees of happiness, or one with 5 billion people in it, each with 149,146.2413 degrees of happiness?
(These “degrees” of happiness are simply an arbitrary measure in order to make my point, much like in the torture and dust specks discussion.)