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Yes you are wrong. Simply consider a diabetic and me; the utility of an external insulin supply to me is vanishingly small, yet its life or death to them. Sim

Yes you are wrong. Simply consider a diabetic and me; the utility of an external insulin supply to me is vanishingly small, yet its life or death to them. Similarly, the graph of utility value vs amount of sugar will look very different for us. I've used a diabetic because its an obvious and massive difference, but the cookie example applies too. I like cookies, but my girlfriend likes them more. I dislike white chocolate cookies, and loves them. This is a common difference in utility.

aabhay 6y ago
But your flaw here is extrapolating this utility difference to its limit, that something like a cookie can become exponentially more valuable to someone versus their peers. The value of insulin is just that — life and death. But it certainly doesn’t equate to a million lives or deaths.
- NateEag 6y ago
  You are suffering a failure of creativity. Suppose a psychedelic drug that is incredibly difficult to synthesize makes someone inhumanly good at problem solving, but only for a few minutes. Further suppose one of the easiest ways to create this drug is to harvest human brains. They have to be extracted while the donor is still alive, though, as the delicate compounds coming from the brain become unusable rapidly after death. According to utilitarianism, if that person uses their insane problem solving abilities to increase utility for others, and they're good enough at it with this drug, then we should throw the people who generate the least utility for others (e.g. the poor and disadvantaged, who usually have few resources to offer and little training or skill) into the brain ripper so that the remaining people can get the gains. This example may seem absurd, but many others like it can be constructed. Spend a few minutes trying and you'll come up with some. This one took me thirty seconds, if that. See "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin for the canonical illustration of this problem.
  - speakeron 6y ago
    The reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism was, of course, Eliezer Yudkowsky's "Torture vs Dust Specks"[1] [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs-dust-specks https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs...
    - ralfd 6y ago
      Not so absurd: Do you prefer that old people can die of Covid-19 (a few are tortured) or that public life is locked down (millions are mildly inconvenienced)?
      - Filligree 6y ago
        Although the purpose of the lockdowns isn't to prevent old people dying, per se. It's to buy time and prevent system collapse while the government builds out systems to track and quarantine individuals who may be infected. The lockdown can be eased once we have a better option. You could argue that there was plenty of time to build such systems before COVID-19 made it to your country, and you'd probably be right. You could also argue that maybe your government hasn't been on the ball with the second half of this story, and you might be right, but that's neither here nor there.
  - c22 6y ago
    We should make the people who discovered the drug take it and use its effects to figure out a way to synthesize more of it without shredding living human brains. Then we can get to the business of other gains. For the first run we should just ask for volunteers. No need to pre-optimize, maybe some of those poor and disadvantaged people will end up contributing more on NZT.
    - NateEag 6y ago
      I was unclear - I meant to suggest that one specific individual gained these superpowers from the drug, while most people do not. That said, playing back-and-forth to out-game the other side in hypotheticals is a never-ending game. I see little value in it.
croon 6y ago
Right, but I assume insulin has the same utility regardless of which diabetic we're talking about? And there are people who want to live in the woods without interacting with people, with 0 use of $100. And people who don't like cookies at all, etc, etc. I view it more from a statistical point of view. Your model doesn't have to consider individual preferences (or needs) to increase utility (it would have to to literally maximize). We can likely assume that out of 1000 people, 100 insulin pens would have more utility being distributed to the ~10% diabetics, rather than the same diabetic who "wants it more".
- ryanbrunner 6y ago
  I don't know that much about diabetes, but I'm sure that there are people for whom insulin is more of an urgent need than the average diabetic. And if not diabetes, there's plenty of conditions where people have it in varying degrees of severity, where lack of treatment is life threatening for some and not a huge deal for others. If you had, for example, 10 treatments for a disease, 10 severe cases, and 10 mild cases, I would assume that utilitarianism would posit that the 10 most severe cases should get it.
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    Insulin is an urgent need for any T1 diabetic. They could maybe make it a week depending on what they ate, but they could also be dead in a day. There isn't really such a thing as mild or severe Type 1, only well treated and poorly treated. You could maybe say "insulin is an urgent need for a diabetic who just ate 3 cookies, but not as urgent for one who just ate a plate of vegetables". But both will need some amount of insulin within 24 hours. Type 2 is a different story, and not all Type 2's need insulin.
- Normal_gaussian 6y ago
  As a note, this is most expressly not my model. In point of practicality - insulin does have differing utility for each diabetic. A note I meant to put in the original comment is that utility is considered equally, not equal. So yes, if you have 100 insulin pens they distribute according to need. The point of the original wikipedia article is it is normally always possible to construct a "utility monster" that would take the need to the extreme and suck away all the utility. In the diabetic/insulinpen scenario this might be done by declaring the monster is a giant of epic proportions and failure to take all 100 pens means death, whereas for the others it 'only' means severe complications. It should be noted the point at which insulin is next available alters the practicalities but not the gist; if people will die before more insulin is available, our monster should have more utility than those who die etc. One way to frame the egalitarianism of utilitarianism is as a part of the equity vs equality debate; considering everyone equally but not as equals is fairer.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Fair points, but not the unfairness Bentham was attacking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23192195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23192195 It's useful to understand a concept in the context innwhich it was formulated before attacking it. Bentham's notion was intended as egalitaria. This does not mean it's unflawed, however.

aabhay 6y ago

But your flaw here is extrapolating this utility difference to its limit, that something like a cookie can become exponentially more valuable to someone versus their peers. The value of insulin is just that — life and death. But it certainly doesn’t equate to a million lives or deaths.

NateEag 6y ago
You are suffering a failure of creativity. Suppose a psychedelic drug that is incredibly difficult to synthesize makes someone inhumanly good at problem solving, but only for a few minutes. Further suppose one of the easiest ways to create this drug is to harvest human brains. They have to be extracted while the donor is still alive, though, as the delicate compounds coming from the brain become unusable rapidly after death. According to utilitarianism, if that person uses their insane problem solving abilities to increase utility for others, and they're good enough at it with this drug, then we should throw the people who generate the least utility for others (e.g. the poor and disadvantaged, who usually have few resources to offer and little training or skill) into the brain ripper so that the remaining people can get the gains. This example may seem absurd, but many others like it can be constructed. Spend a few minutes trying and you'll come up with some. This one took me thirty seconds, if that. See "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin for the canonical illustration of this problem.
- speakeron 6y ago
  The reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism was, of course, Eliezer Yudkowsky's "Torture vs Dust Specks"[1] [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs-dust-specks https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs...
  - ralfd 6y ago
    Not so absurd: Do you prefer that old people can die of Covid-19 (a few are tortured) or that public life is locked down (millions are mildly inconvenienced)?
    - Filligree 6y ago
      Although the purpose of the lockdowns isn't to prevent old people dying, per se. It's to buy time and prevent system collapse while the government builds out systems to track and quarantine individuals who may be infected. The lockdown can be eased once we have a better option. You could argue that there was plenty of time to build such systems before COVID-19 made it to your country, and you'd probably be right. You could also argue that maybe your government hasn't been on the ball with the second half of this story, and you might be right, but that's neither here nor there.
- c22 6y ago
  We should make the people who discovered the drug take it and use its effects to figure out a way to synthesize more of it without shredding living human brains. Then we can get to the business of other gains. For the first run we should just ask for volunteers. No need to pre-optimize, maybe some of those poor and disadvantaged people will end up contributing more on NZT.
  - NateEag 6y ago
    I was unclear - I meant to suggest that one specific individual gained these superpowers from the drug, while most people do not. That said, playing back-and-forth to out-game the other side in hypotheticals is a never-ending game. I see little value in it.

croon 6y ago

Right, but I assume insulin has the same utility regardless of which diabetic we're talking about? And there are people who want to live in the woods without interacting with people, with 0 use of $100. And people who don't like cookies at all, etc, etc. I view it more from a statistical point of view. Your model doesn't have to consider individual preferences (or needs) to increase utility (it would have to to literally maximize). We can likely assume that out of 1000 people, 100 insulin pens would have more utility being distributed to the ~10% diabetics, rather than the same diabetic who "wants it more".

ryanbrunner 6y ago
I don't know that much about diabetes, but I'm sure that there are people for whom insulin is more of an urgent need than the average diabetic. And if not diabetes, there's plenty of conditions where people have it in varying degrees of severity, where lack of treatment is life threatening for some and not a huge deal for others. If you had, for example, 10 treatments for a disease, 10 severe cases, and 10 mild cases, I would assume that utilitarianism would posit that the 10 most severe cases should get it.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  Insulin is an urgent need for any T1 diabetic. They could maybe make it a week depending on what they ate, but they could also be dead in a day. There isn't really such a thing as mild or severe Type 1, only well treated and poorly treated. You could maybe say "insulin is an urgent need for a diabetic who just ate 3 cookies, but not as urgent for one who just ate a plate of vegetables". But both will need some amount of insulin within 24 hours. Type 2 is a different story, and not all Type 2's need insulin.
Normal_gaussian 6y ago
As a note, this is most expressly not my model. In point of practicality - insulin does have differing utility for each diabetic. A note I meant to put in the original comment is that utility is considered equally, not equal. So yes, if you have 100 insulin pens they distribute according to need. The point of the original wikipedia article is it is normally always possible to construct a "utility monster" that would take the need to the extreme and suck away all the utility. In the diabetic/insulinpen scenario this might be done by declaring the monster is a giant of epic proportions and failure to take all 100 pens means death, whereas for the others it 'only' means severe complications. It should be noted the point at which insulin is next available alters the practicalities but not the gist; if people will die before more insulin is available, our monster should have more utility than those who die etc. One way to frame the egalitarianism of utilitarianism is as a part of the equity vs equality debate; considering everyone equally but not as equals is fairer.

dredmorbius 6y ago

Fair points, but not the unfairness Bentham was attacking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23192195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23192195 It's useful to understand a concept in the context innwhich it was formulated before attacking it. Bentham's notion was intended as egalitaria. This does not mean it's unflawed, however.