CMV: Utilitarianism is improved by discounting uncertainty

Like its alternatives, utilitarianism can lead to uncomfortable conclusions. I believe that adding a discount in proportion to uncertainty addresses many of these uncomfortable conclusions, and makes utilitarianism closer to fully applicable.

**principle**

"Uncertainty" here does not mean probability. Where we have reasonable probabilities, we can calculate the expected utility. The uncertainty here is deeper, either due to lack of knowledge, or because the uncertainty is fundamentally epistemic and we cannot know.

"Discounting uncertainty" is effectively putting moral value on certainty. While in principal this might not be essential, practically it is. In the end any consequentialist framework relies on those practical outcomes. This limits gambling with moral outcomes and promotes slower-but steady and well-understood paths towards good.

The discount is a subtraction from the utility calculated by normal utilitarianism. This makes it differ from a expected utility calculation, where a less accurate guess would be equally likely to be higher as lower than a high precision one.

**examples**

One thing this introduces is a form of selfishness. If I have some chocolate, normal utilitarianism would be ambivalent on me eating that or giving it away. The smallest of reasons to give the chocolate away becomes a good reason to give it away. Say a friend is ever so slightly hungry, and I am not. Traditionally, the highest utility action is to give my friend the chocolate. However, let's introduce the uncertainty discount here. Epistemically, I know how much I enjoy chocolate more than how much my friend likes it, and I probably know it better for my friend than for a stranger. Discounting by that uncertainty lets me keep the chocolate, or prefer friends over strangers.

There is a catch here. I called it selfishness before, but this does come back as the opposite for the least negative actions. I.e. all else being equal if I have to cause some pain, I should choose myself over someone else, because I know more about how much that would impact me than I do about others. Some self sacrifice for negative actions and selfishness for positive ones feels right to me - but perhaps there are some issues here.

Another issue this addresses is the utility monster. This monster gets more utility than others from a certain resource. We should give that utility monster all the resource we can in the traditional utilitarian sense. However, the utility monster becomes more and more uncertain to be real and possible, the more we assert their utility gain to be higher than others', that epistemic uncertainty gain adds up the discount to balance the monster out.

**CMV**

I'd like to be correct more than I like to follow this "utilitarianism + uncertainty discount". I would love to hear what, if anything, is messed up about this approach. To tweak it, or discard it as an improvement altogether.