Thanks Kenny! I think it is the main bias in EAs—we so easily add up things in our minds (e.g., summing happiness across individuals) that we don’t stop to realize that there is no “cosmic” place where all that happiness is occurring. There are just individual minds.
I appreciate Kenny’s comments pointing toward potentially relevant literature, and agree that you could be a utilitarian without fully biting this bullet … but as far as I can tell, attempts to do so have enough weird consequences of their own that I’d rather just bite the bullet. This dialogue gives some of the intuition for being skeptical of some things being infinitely more valuable than others.
Thanks Kenny!
I think it is the main bias in EAs—we so easily add up things in our minds (e.g., summing happiness across individuals) that we don’t stop to realize that there is no “cosmic” place where all that happiness is occurring. There are just individual minds.