In cases 1 and 2, it doesn’t really matter what we think of her calculations; if you’re fed sufficiently wrong information then correct algorithms can lead you to terrible decisions.
But that might still matter. It may be that utilitarianism produces the best results given no bad information, but something else, like “never permit experimentation without informed consent” would produce better results (on the average) in a world that contains bad information. Especially since whether the latter produces better results will depend on the frequency and nature of the bad information—the more the bad information encourages excess experimentation, the worse utilitarianism comes out in the comparison.
But a good utilitarian will certainly take into account the likelyhood of bad information and act appropriately. Hence the great utilitarian Mill’s advocacy of minimal interference in people’s lives in On Liberty, largely on the basis of the ways that ubiquitous bad information will make well-intentioned interference backfire often enough to make it a lower expected utility strategy in a very wide range of cases.
A competent utilitarian might be able to take into account the limitations of noisy information, maybe even in some way more useful than passivity. That’s not the same class of problem as information which has been deliberately and systematically corrupted by an actual conspiracy in order to lead the utilitarian decisionmaker to the conspiracy’s preferred conclusion.
But that might still matter. It may be that utilitarianism produces the best results given no bad information, but something else, like “never permit experimentation without informed consent” would produce better results (on the average) in a world that contains bad information. Especially since whether the latter produces better results will depend on the frequency and nature of the bad information—the more the bad information encourages excess experimentation, the worse utilitarianism comes out in the comparison.
But a good utilitarian will certainly take into account the likelyhood of bad information and act appropriately. Hence the great utilitarian Mill’s advocacy of minimal interference in people’s lives in On Liberty, largely on the basis of the ways that ubiquitous bad information will make well-intentioned interference backfire often enough to make it a lower expected utility strategy in a very wide range of cases.
A competent utilitarian might be able to take into account the limitations of noisy information, maybe even in some way more useful than passivity. That’s not the same class of problem as information which has been deliberately and systematically corrupted by an actual conspiracy in order to lead the utilitarian decisionmaker to the conspiracy’s preferred conclusion.