So there's this argument that utilitarianism doesn't work because (per work by behavioral economists) preferences are non-transitive. That is, you can't make a top to bottom list of preferences for each person where the higher position is always a higher preference.

But, like, surely preferences are *pretty* transitive? You can construct weird non-transitive cases. But for most purchase you could construct a list.

@ZachWeinersmith the version of this conversation I am most familiar with is: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/
Arrow’s Theorem (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

@njudd In immediately thought of this, and the phrase "I contain multitudes," since to my knowledge Arrow's theorem relates to how a set of individuals with transitive preferences will not necessarily have transitive preferences in aggregate as a group. @ZachWeinersmith
@internic @ZachWeinersmith yes, that’s the idea. If you rank preferences based on dimension x more than y and z, and I rank based on y more than x and z, and Zach ranks on z more than y or x, then we are in for a hard time coming to agreement.