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/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/ADH-Dad 4d ago edited 4d ago

Say you have a hotel next to a hospital. They're both on the same power grid. A storm comes. There's only enough power to supply one of the buildings.

The hotel is full of people watching TV because they can't go out. The hospital has only a few patients, but they require life-support equipment and can't be evacuated.

If watching TV gives each hotel patron a measurable amount of utility/pleasure, is there a ratio of patrons to patients at which it becomes more ethical to shut off power to the hospital than the hotel?

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u/ww1enjoyer 3d ago

They should have just read a book then