A naïve utilitarian contemplates upvotes

We might model how good a post overall is by drawing a bar chart, one bar for each reader, reflecting how good they think the post is (how much utility they get out of it). Then the goodness of the post is the area under the curve. readers utility We might also model that a reader upvotes a post if its subjective goodness crosses some threshold, so, the number of upvotes a post gets is just the number of bars passing the threshold: upvote threshold number of upvotes readers utility The post depicted above would receive the same number of upvotes as the following "much better" post: upvote threshold number of upvotes readers utility And as the following "much worse" one: upvote threshold number of upvotes readers utility The number of upvotes only gives a weak lower bound (the shaded blue rectangle) on the total utility of the post. Let's additionally make up a rule that there's an upper bound on the total utility a post can have (the idea being, I think it's hard to write a post with…