The Problem with Utilitarianism (Featuring Covid-19 Mass Psychosis)

Eliezer Yudkowsky once proposed an interesting through experiment. Imagine the most minor incidence of pain that a human being can experience, which is accretable over multiple people; that is to say, that it’s measurably worse for two people to experience it than just one person. He suggested a stinging dust mote in the eye. Now imagine the worst sort of pain somebody can experience – say, 50 years of torture. Then a hostile, God-like AI gives you a choice: either one person gets tortured f...