Ben_West🔸 comments on Scope-sensitive ethics: capturing the core intuition motivating utilitarianism

[Ben_West🔸]

I think it means that there is something which we value linearly, but that thing might be a complicated function of happiness, preference satisfaction, etc.

As a toy example, say that $S\left(x\right)$ is some bounded sigmoid function, and my utility function is to maximize $E\left[S\right(x\left)\right]$; it’s always going to be the case that $E\left[S\right(x_1\left)\right]\ge E\left[S\right(x_2\left)\right]\iff x_1\ge x_2$ so I am in some sense scope sensitive, but I don’t think I’m open to Pascal’s mugging. (Correct me if this is wrong though.)

[Lukas Finnveden]

As a toy example, say that $S\left(x\right)$ is some bounded sigmoid function, and my utility function is to maximize $E\left[S\right(x\left)\right]$; it’s always going to be the case that $E\left[S\right(x_1\left)\right]\ge E\left[S\right(x_2\left)\right]\iff x_1\ge x_2$ so I am in some sense scope sensitive, but I don’t think I’m open to Pascal’s mugging

This seems right to me.

I think it means that there is something which we value linearly, but that thing might be a complicated function of happiness, preference satisfaction, etc.

Yeah, I have no quibbles with this. FWIW, I personally didn’t interpret the passage as saying this, so if that’s what’s meant, I’d recommend reformulating.

(To gesture at where I’m coming from: “in expectation bring about more paperclips” seems much more specific than “in expectation increase some function defined over the number of paperclips”; and I assumed that this statement was similar, except pointing towards the physical structure of “intuitively valuable aspects of individual lives” rather than the physical structure of “paperclips”. In particular, “intuitively valuable aspects of individual lives” seems like a local phenomena rather than something defined over world-histories, and you kind of need to define your utility function over world-histories to represent risk-aversion.)

[Ben_West🔸]

That makes sense; your interpretation does seem reasonable, so perhaps a rephrase a would be helpful.