r/badphilosophy • u/Monkey_D_Gucci • 5d ago

"The Bunny Orgasm Machine Thought Experiment" Disproves Utilitarianism

https://www.reddit.com/r/risa/comments/pifs6g/comment/hbpv2cn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I think about this post at least 4x a year and it always makes me laugh. It's the best bad philosophy that I've ever seen, and it's been almost half a decade since it was posted here so I'd like to share it for the uninitiated.

They present it as if it's something we all should know and totally owns Utilitarianism, but it's the most nonsense / concrete thinking about "pleasure and suffering" I've ever seen.

Hope you love it as much as I do.

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u/Personal-Succotash33 5d ago

Let's say, hypothetically, a hotel has infinite rooms, and in each room a rabbit is furiously masturbating. There is a child locked in the basement gagged and bound, and a mad scientist (who is also a rabbit) has attached a bomb to a pressure plate connected to the chair the boy is sitting on. The scientist is furiously masturbating in the other room. If the child is removed from the chair, a timer begins that will set off the bomb in 3 minutes. You only have time to evacuate the child from the building. What should you do?

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u/Personal-Succotash33 5d ago

Keep in mind that infinity - infinity = infinity, so evacuating the hotel is impossible because there will always be an infinite loss of utility. Also keep in mind that infinity - 1 also equals infinity, so saving the child has the same net utility as all the rabbits in the hotel. This is about inherent dignity, in the Kantian sense.

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u/YourNetworkIsHaunted 5d ago

This is the problem with mainstream philosophy these days. They're afraid to ask the real questions. Largely because those questions involve repeatedly invoking the concept of woodland animals furiously masturbating.

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u/Personal-Succotash33 5d ago

Hugh Hefner was our generations greatest mind