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 acce

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.