Let's see how a utilitarian dictator would arrange things for Adam, Eve, and Lilith. One heroic assumption that utilitarians make is that you can actually compare happiness and misery across different people: In reality, brain scans are making this easier to do but it's still a lot of guesswork. Let's suppose that this utilitarian dictator has eight apples to distribute: The table shows the utility that each person receives from their first apple (a lot), but extra apples give less extra happiness (apples give "diminishing marginal utility," in economic jargon).
a. So, if the dictator wants to maximize the sum of Adam, Eve, and Lilith's utility, how many apples does each person get?
b. If instead, Lilith received 2,000 units of utility from the first apple, how would this change the optimal utilitarian distribution?