Yes, there are always creative ways to avoid really answering the question (such as doing a brain upload, as suggested), but these answers do nothing to answer the underlying question, which is what the thought experiment is really trying to get at.

The problem with that, of course, is that even within our species, we have many different (and mutually-exclusive!) utility functions; sociopaths, for example, calculate theirs noticeably differently. So, it still ends up turned into a problem of cultural meta-ethics. That is, it's no longer a matter of "who do we shun and revile?" but "how do we get along?" or perhaps "do we want to get along?" (Which brings me to this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/)

To be a little more clear, your answer (yes or no) is of little value to me. What I really want to know is why you answer yes or no--is it because of some general principle you're applying, because of a gut instinct, because someone told you to say that, or something else?

EDIT: Based on the reply below, I'm not being clear. There are lots of reasons I'd like to know your reasoning process, beyond trying to generalize it to people in general. Among other things, I'd like to know whether I should be worried about going to dinner with you (particularly if your answer is "Sure, I'd kill for even just a dollar").

Instead, the question of what an individual cares about will be solved by coming up with a technique to look at a person's brain and tell them, definitively, what values they care about at that moment in time. Anything said about individual ethical belief until then is just sophistry.

We may be able to model some sort of "objectively-good" cooperative-evolutionary game-players using mathematics, but those models would not necessarily represent us; there's nothing that says we're even evolutionarily stable as a species over the long term ;)

Just to counterpoint the frenzy of moral nihilism and relativism I suspect will appear, I respectfully disagree, I'm a moral universalist, i.e. morals do exist, moral judgements can be true or false.

But I also realize that this is a question of philosophical faith, and arguing about that is usually pretty futile. :)

1. Given the laws of physics, could you derive your morality? 2. If we didn't exist, and in our place were an alien species that, say, ate their babies[1], would that make the universe contain less utility as a whole?

[1] The same story I linked to above: http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/. Who is in the right? Do we have the "moral imperative" to destroy the baby-eaters? Do the third species have a moral imperative to destroy us?

2) You're asking me to sum up and compare the values of two complete civilizations? That's a pretty tall order. Also, in one of the alternatives I wouldn't exist, that's a lot less utility right there.

What I said above was that "morals or utility" are subjective to an individual—which agrees with your point. I said "and thus don't really exist" because the definitions for epistemic morality or universal utilitarianism require them to be universal—and they're not, so they don't exist as defined. (And a system that accepts subjective morality is usually just called "ethics", by the way.)

Humans are not inherently expected utility maximizers, they're bounded agents with little capacity for reflection. Utility functions are great and all, but in the words of Zack M. Davis, "Humans don't have utility functions."

Is this function computable?

SUVs: maybe, but I would say our continued reliance on oil in general rather than SUVs in particular.

Bullying: could be.

Parasites on the welfare system: not convinced. The fact we have a welfare system will be judged favourably I expect.

Predatory banking practices: pass, not sure.

It's hard to imagine what things it will be--their values may be very different from ours. I'd say oil reliance, over population, the gulf between the rich and the impoverished, but these things are all too obvious. I suspect we'd be surprised by what we're judged badly for.

If this is your understanding of philosophy, I'd say you're misusing philosophy for dealing with personal problems.

On a philosophical level though, a lot of people would probably disagree with your proposed actions. For me, personally, I wouldn't want to "influence" (vaguely kill, but also any of these "duplication" scenarios) someone else's mortality for any amount of money.

So you're a Spock, not a Kirk.

That's what I mean by "discontinuity": you can't give a cost-benefit analysis to something like a trillion dollars, because one trillion-dollar investment can completely alter the course of civilization with its knock-on effects.

But it was mostly a quibble :) I agree with your central argument.

There are a ton of similar questions.

The problem with speculative fiction is that it needs a technological conflict. Worthwhile utopias don't do that.

If your morals are based on principle, then no matter who the person was, your decision would remain the same.

I believe/hope that I am the type of person who would not take anothers' life no matter what the circumstances because I want to be a person of principle. If there were some situation where I did take a life, then I am not the principled person I think I am.

Take the example of Google and their motto,'Don't be Evil'. It was a nice bit of marketing, but when the value of doing business with a repressive government was high enough, they and other company's apparently had no problems working with said governments to continue the repression of it's citizens.

Now, you may say, Google has left that country. But, it was not due to the moral repugnance they felt about repressing the citizens, but the fact they were under attack by agents/citizens of said government and felt it was no longer in their interest 'financially' to stay.

In the case of google, they came to China but actually provided a less censored service than baidu (by writing in the search pages that some results were left out because of censoring thus attracting attention to it)... So in what way was their behavior evil?

Additionnaly, they never started any blogging service in China that would have put them in a situation where they had to give information to the government about political activists (unlike yahoo who gave such information)...

So, I don't think Google did anything evil in that case...

Of course not... The only thing they could do and did is give another reliable search engine that censored less than their competitors...

As for what kind of effect they could have: Google is an internationally recognized brand that is most certainly known in China (even without being the dominant search engine). Refusing to do business with China would be hard for the state-run media to explain away.

Of course, I think a lot of people really, really want to believe that Google is different from every single other multinational organization that has ever existed. It's not.

I think the difference between your point of view and my point of view is that I don't see things as completely black...

China is a repressive government and freedom of speech is not allowed there but it's certainly better than it was during the cultural revolution and I think it'll get better...

Now, as someone who lived in China before Google decided to move in the chinese market I can tell you that it was a great news to see them move... Before they were intermitently blocked by the Chinese firewall, a lot of queries were blocked so access to good search engines was not very good...

After Google moved to China, well they had to censor some of the results out but then they would point it out, and connection and access to google was much better...

So for me, it was a net benefit to see google move in China, and I hope that them moving out won't result in their being blocked again...

I guess my point is that they aren't even in the same stratosphere. Twitter and Facebook may be international recognized (and clearly I should have differentiated here), but they aren't in any way equivalent to a behemoth like Google.

Apart from that, Google's revenue doesn't give them any leverage on the Chinese government, mostly because they wouldn't ever back down on censoring as it would mean losing face...

Oh, I think the CCP cares very deeply about freedom of speech. Just maybe not in the way that you'd like ; )