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Frikster2 karma

Forgive me if this shows ignorance on the topic, but have you had any issues with people who are living on the cusp of this (I don't know, say $3 a day) where they then become disempowered for not being selected by the program? (Their friends become better off than them, but they don't)

Frikster1 karma

Hi Prof. Singer

As a utilitarian, how do you model actions that will result in pleasure vs actions that will prevent harm? The obvious answer is that you don't place the same weight on pleasure as you do on suffering and that obviously reducing suffering gets the larger weight. But still... how do you choose between action X and action Y when one will reduce suffering a tiny bit and the other will increase pleasure a lot?

For example, I read that Bill Gates is supporting research/development of condoms that should make sex more pleasurable for males. Part of the reason this would be an effective avenue to support is that this should encourage people to use it and therefore stem the tide of STD's but, as a utilitarian myself, I see this avenue of research as valuable within itself for potentially and, very effectively in a per $ sense, increasing the amount of pleasure human beings can have. The question is whether you could see yourself donating to a cause (that is shown to be effective at what it claims to do) that's primary goal is to increase pleasure rather than prevent pain. Or would you only support such a cause if it also secondarily seems to reduce suffering or encourages people to do something that would reduce suffering?

As a further thought: there are a lot of luxuries I enjoy in the first world. I often feel that those that have no access to some of them are missing out on the full dimension of the human experience (not getting as much pleasure as me in as much a varied way). So, I mean obviously I would and you would give less to these types of "charities" than those recommended by GiveWell. But again, still. Can you imagine a "charity" that you would support that, instead of reducing pain, provided a luxury to the underprivileged?

Frikster1 karma

Will Orion work well with Intel's ridiculously fast Thunderbolt 3 ports and could this help with all of leap motion latency issues? What if you had a USB 3.0 hub connected to a Thunderbolt 3 port?