“Shut Up and Divide” boils down to “actually, you maybe shouldn’t care about individual strangers, because that’s more logically consistent (unless you multiply, in which case it’s equally consistent)”. But caring is a higher and more human virtue than being consistent, especially since there are two options here: be consistent and care about individual strangers, or just be consistent.
This reasoning seems confused. Caring more about certain individuals than others is a totally valid utility function that you can have. You can’t
especially care about individual people while simultaneously caring about everyone equally. You just can’t. “Logically consistent” means that you don’t claim to do both of these mutually exclusive things at once.
When I say “be consistent and care about individual strangers”, I mean shut up and multiply. There’s no contradiction. It’s caring about individual strangers taken to the extreme where you care about everyone equally. If you care about logical consistency that works as well as shut up and divide.
This reasoning seems confused. Caring more about certain individuals than others is a totally valid utility function that you can have. You can’t
especially care about individual people while simultaneously caring about everyone equally. You just can’t. “Logically consistent” means that you don’t claim to do both of these mutually exclusive things at once.
When I say “be consistent and care about individual strangers”, I mean shut up and multiply. There’s no contradiction. It’s caring about individual strangers taken to the extreme where you care about everyone equally. If you care about logical consistency that works as well as shut up and divide.