Utility monsters - aren't we all?

(Edit, I figured that I'm not the first one to talk about this, see Phil Goetz's article on utility monsters on LessWrong)

The famous utility monster "paradox" is stated as something to this effect: If there were a creature with a vastly greater efficiency in converting resources into happiness than all other sentient beings combined, doesn't utilitarinism recommend diverting our supply of resources to sustain the happiness of this monster?

This is a lot more legitimate than the "utilitarianism oppresses minorities" argument, which is an attempt at getting at the same thing, but fails totally.

For the purposes of this illustration, I'll avoid all discussion about the practicality of the implementation of such an idea (let's presume the utility monster is strong enough to be protected from the masses), and presume that the effeciency of the utility monster is great enough to overshadow all the possible utility from the people being productive and all (let's also say that the people aren't smart enough to study the utility monster find a way to make themselves as efficient as the utility monster). We're also considering only classical utilitarianism here, which means any idea of "capping the utility for each individual" is thrown out of the window.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's consider if the whole "utility monster" thing is really so detatched from our moral intuition.

My first argument is this: We are all utility monsters.

Our immediate moral intuition refuses to see things from the perspective of the utility monster, because we are incapable of understanding the happiness of the utility monsters. We religiously brand the utility monster as "selfish" because of its biological traits and our insistence on behaving as if it had the same cap on happiness as us humans, and believe at some level, that it's "deserving" of slaughter or of slaying.

So why not scale down the scales of happiness, so we can relate to the emotions of the utility monster? Let's bring down the emotions of the utility monster to the level of our own emotions, and the emotions of us humans to those of, say, mosquitoes.

A human's cap on happiness is vastly greater than that of a mosquito. We are capable of feeling excruciating pains, while mosquitoes are only capable of feeling mild discomforts. We are capable of feeling pleasures and all those emotions to a much greater degree than those little flying insects.

And surely, we wouldn't mind a massacre of thousands of mosquitoes to save a single person from malaria. This isn't even considering the utility the person has on society, for we'd be willing to do this for a mentally challenged individual completely incapble of contributing to society. We are willing to sacrifice the pleasures of thousands of mosquitoes for only the direct happiness of a single person.

And what about rocks, or air, or anything that doesn't feel happiness?

Aren't we the utility monsters to them all?

My second argument is this: How is the utility monster problem any different from the fatal consequence problem?

The utilitarian argument against smoking is that the single negative effect of smoking (the consequences on long term health) is great enough to outweigh any short-term pleasures from smoking.

Here the "utility monster" is the lung cancer (and other consequences on personal health), and the "oppressed individuals" are the short-term pleasures from smoking.

I sure hope we all agree smoking is bad.