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A comment on Why things might have taken so long. Parent comment

Re:Why things might have taken so long by jstanley on Thursday January 04, 2018 @10:48AM (#16071193)
> If a given adoption has an individual utility of +1, and a collective detriment of -0.01,

OK but imagine if everyone in the world did the "bad thing". The world would gain 8 billion utility and lose 800 million, so it's still winning.

I think you mean something like an individual utility of +1 and a collective detriment of -1.01?

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Re:Why things might have taken so long by razorunreal on Thursday January 04, 2018 @11:35AM (#16071638)
No, I to think he's saying that -0.01 applies to everyone. Each individual choice is actually causing a loss of 80 million in utility (vs a gain of 1), but that loss is mostly borne by other people, so they are individually better off making that choice.
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Re:Why things might have taken so long by jstanley on Thursday January 04, 2018 @05:07PM (#16074528)
Got it. -0.01 per person, not -0.01 in total.
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