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in my own amateur philosopher can't get to sleep what should i think about sort of thinking, i "solved" this by stating that when considering global outcomes yo
by randomsearch 6y ago
in my own amateur philosopher can't get to sleep what should i think about sort of thinking, i "solved" this by stating that when considering global outcomes you must use statistics, and that not just the sum of the distribution but also its means, variance, and (in particular) lower quartile also matters.
So for me the repugnant conclusion fails because there's some point where it's unfair to the person least well off on the planet to add an additional person, as they will as a result fall below some bar for quality of life.
i'm not a philosopher but i can't see the holes in this argument.
it also applies to "eating meat allows cows to live so is good" -- well, no, because you have to dig into the details of what the distribution of welfare looks like for those cows.
- yboris 6y agoI think this is what is meant by "life barely worth living" in The Repugnant Conclusion: whatever the lowest quality of life permissible for life to be worth living. This is what you call "some bar for quality of life". The claim is that if everyone is above this quality of life, when the number of those living is sufficiently large enough, it is a better world than 10 billion individuals living amazing lives.