October 23, 2026
utilitarianism is an incredibly sympathetic belief system; it at one point quantizing everything was very appealing to me, that as cold, with the correct goal, follow a determined path such that the only possible outcome was that which one strives for. if they were to put in appropriate effort simply seemed correct. this urge to convert the world into numbers represents the infallible delusion that numbers may describe everything such that an ideal conclusion to any problem may be reached.
much of life is quantifiable, much more than we are comfortable with! see QALYs for an example. however measuring more abstract ideas such as utility and suffering presupposes some universally accepted unit thereof which i do not believe exists. a utilitarian may argue that everyone simply should follow their framework. everyone believes this about their closely-held beliefs furthermore this utility or other unit must be calculable and yet no one has shown me the existence of the great utility calculator in the sky.
suffering is bad; this is only mildly disputable in that a limited amount provides contrast to one’s life such that other experiences are made richer. though this must be a very low amount. most would agree that reducing the amount of suffering in the world is good. but it may not be the end of all action, and this is where the utilitarians lose me. this is most obvious in the universal shrimp tiling argument; if a shrimp suffers a small amount, it would be justified to sacrifice one human for 10^10 screaming shrimp. the utilitarian would. however, i would not, as:
a) shrimp are too small to care about. b) 10^10 is too big
when dealing in large and small numbers thought experiments tend to lose me. humans are not gifted in dealing with these magnitudes; these thought experiments are playing with words and are not to be taken seriously! the same goes for the 0% discount rate; an infinite amount of time in the future matters. time and space do not necessarily equate. even with space, it is far easier to calculate a hypothetical utility for your neighbor. now, one should still donate to effective charities! but a barbell strategy is far more sympathetic in my eyes. one’s ingroup should matter to them.
the unfeeling math of pure utilitarianism is distasteful in that it takes advantage of our inability to comprehend strange magnitudes. a simple proposition: large numbers are not real and cannot hurt me.