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It's not directly saying adding more people, it's just saying if we take world A, and world B and compared them. This video gives a bit of a feel for the compa

It's not directly saying adding more people, it's just saying if we take world A, and world B and compared them. This video gives a bit of a feel for the comparison steps that lead you to the repugnant conclusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqBl50TREHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqBl50TREHU

yaur 6y ago
would you prefer to live in a world where you had a 100% chance to be as happy as possible or a 51% chance to be as happy possible or a 49% chance to be not quite unhappy enough to commit suicide. I know where I stand and think that the "not worse" step presented in the video is a leap of logic taken without any justification.
comex 6y ago
Yes, I'm being a bit sloppy by saying "adding more people". (Although, to be fair, the most obvious way to influence the future population that is morally acceptable is choosing whether or not to add people to it by having children, or influencing others making that choice. Removing people by killing them is not acceptable, for reasons beyond the scope of utilitarianism.) I diverge from the video's argument at 1:10 when she says "it's hard to see how it could be worse". To me, a world with lower average happiness is intuitively worse. I do think there are some aspects where a higher population is better. For example, if there is a wide breadth of life experiences in the world, it makes for a more interesting society. Also, a higher population increases the chance of humanity surviving in the long term. But these effects tend to be logarithmic. A world with one billion people has some advantages over a world with only one million people (though it has some disadvantages too). But if the choice is between a world of 1 billion or 2 billion people, as posited in the video, the breadth of society, and humanity's chance of surviving, are about the same in both. That leaves the higher average happiness of World A as the most significant difference, making it preferable.

yaur 6y ago

would you prefer to live in a world where you had a 100% chance to be as happy as possible or a 51% chance to be as happy possible or a 49% chance to be not quite unhappy enough to commit suicide. I know where I stand and think that the "not worse" step presented in the video is a leap of logic taken without any justification.

comex 6y ago

Yes, I'm being a bit sloppy by saying "adding more people". (Although, to be fair, the most obvious way to influence the future population that is morally acceptable is choosing whether or not to add people to it by having children, or influencing others making that choice. Removing people by killing them is not acceptable, for reasons beyond the scope of utilitarianism.) I diverge from the video's argument at 1:10 when she says "it's hard to see how it could be worse". To me, a world with lower average happiness is intuitively worse. I do think there are some aspects where a higher population is better. For example, if there is a wide breadth of life experiences in the world, it makes for a more interesting society. Also, a higher population increases the chance of humanity surviving in the long term. But these effects tend to be logarithmic. A world with one billion people has some advantages over a world with only one million people (though it has some disadvantages too). But if the choice is between a world of 1 billion or 2 billion people, as posited in the video, the breadth of society, and humanity's chance of surviving, are about the same in both. That leaves the higher average happiness of World A as the most significant difference, making it preferable.