2 Comments

While I was forced to concede defeat when we spoke about the "paradox" involving someone that has a very close to zero amount of utility constantly flipping up and down due to deception, I continue to believe that the paradox has a near-zero impact on how we should actually view a theory of ethics.

Curse you for including that disclaimer in the original post. I'm still salty about this >:(

> That doesn’t seem to be bad for them. This is so even if they derive pleasure from thinking that they know the number of atoms in the universe.

This only "seems" to not make them worse off because someone deriving anything from there being an even or odd number of atoms in the universe is absurd. However, when you assume that absurdity away, I see no reason why someone cannot be harmed by being delusional about the number of atoms in the universe (there are clearly an odd number).

Expand full comment

I'm not sure what the disclaimer is. As for your second comment, it seems like if one derives pleasure from thinking there are an even number of stars, that makes them well off. Thus, the intuition isn't about it not being a good source of pleasure. Instead, I think the intuition captures that the thing behind our deceived businessman intuitions are primarily the intuitions that good friends are worthwhile, independently of hedonic considerations. But then that's double counting the objective list theorist intuitions.

Expand full comment