To counter: immortality means that this person must necessarily endure an infinite amount of suffering whether they get off the tracks or not (e.g. drifting through the cold void after the sun explodes)
The other people can be saved from an avoidable grisly death while the immortal’s suffering is merely delayed.
I appreciate this take on the concept of how this utility function would work. If we made the utility function different within our utilitarian framing, we might produce different outcomes given the same scenario. It seems that the differences in our utility functions are whether they are based on absolute or relative suffering. Also, death may be a type of suffering which is different from pain, as I assume most people would accept a large amount of pain to continue living. How many times of getting hit by the train would be equal to one death, I wonder?
To counter: immortality means that this person must necessarily endure an infinite amount of suffering whether they get off the tracks or not (e.g. drifting through the cold void after the sun explodes)
The other people can be saved from an avoidable grisly death while the immortal’s suffering is merely delayed.
I appreciate this take on the concept of how this utility function would work. If we made the utility function different within our utilitarian framing, we might produce different outcomes given the same scenario. It seems that the differences in our utility functions are whether they are based on absolute or relative suffering. Also, death may be a type of suffering which is different from pain, as I assume most people would accept a large amount of pain to continue living. How many times of getting hit by the train would be equal to one death, I wonder?