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That conclusion is not repugnant at all, it's just that its phrasing is so simplistic as to be nearly a straw-man. It's a poisoned intuition pump, because it ma

by feoren 3y ago

That conclusion is not repugnant at all, it's just that its phrasing is so simplistic as to be nearly a straw-man. It's a poisoned intuition pump, because it makes you imagine a situation that doesn't follow at all from utilitarianism. First of all, you're imagining dividing happiness among more people, but imagining them all with the same amount of suffering. You're picturing a drudging life where people work all day and have barely any source of happiness. But if you can magically divide up some total amount of happiness, why not the same with suffering? This is the entire source of the word "repugnant", because it sounds like you get infinite suffering with finite happiness. That does not follow from anything utilitarianism stipulates; you've simply created an awful world and falsely called it utilitarianism. Try to imagine all these people living a nearly completely neutral life, erring a bit on the happier side, and it suddenly doesn't sound so bad. Secondly, you're ignoring the fact that people can create happiness for others. What fixed finite "happiness" resource are we divvying up here? Surely a world with 10 billion people has more great works of art for all to enjoy than a world with 10 people, not to mention far less loneliness. It's crazy to think the total amount of happiness to distribute is independent of the world population. There are many more reasonable objections to even the existence of that so-called "conclusion" without even starting on the many ways of dealing with it.

julianeon 3y ago
Here's a simpler way to phrase the problem. The current world population is about 8 billion. By this argument, and also by your argument, it should actually be 999 billion. Or a number even higher than that. The conclusion boils down to: 1. Find maximum population number earth can support. 2. Hit that number. I do think that, when put this way, it seems simplistic.
- curiousllama 3y ago
  To be fair, boiling something down to a simple statement does indeed tend to produce simplistic statements
- olddustytrail 3y ago
  Here's an even simpler way to phrase the problem. The current world population is about 8 billion. By my argument it should be 2 billion. Your argument is therefore rather foolish.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
shadowgovt 3y ago
All of this having been said, replacing happiness with revenue makes chasing marginal users make a lot of sense. If you have a sure-fire way to get half the people on the planet to give you $1, you can afford a yacht. Even if it means the tool you make for them only induces them to ever give you that $1 and not more... Why do you care? You have a yacht now. You can contemplate whether you should have made them something more useful from the relative safety and comfort of your yacht.
skybrian 3y ago
Yes, more generally, I’m reminded of David Chapman’s essay, “No Cosmic Meaning” [1]. Thought experiments are a good way to depress yourself if you take them seriously. But I think that utilitarianism has a vague but somewhat related problem in treating “utility” as a one-dimensional quantity that you can add up? There are times when adding things together and doing comparisons makes a kind of sense, but it’s an abstraction. Nothing says you ought to quantify and add things up in a particular way, and utilitarianism doesn’t provide a way of resolving disputes about quantifying and adding. Not that it really tries, because it’s furthermore a metaphor about doing math, which isn’t the same thing as doing math. [1] https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning
- pdonis 3y ago
  > utilitarianism has a vague but somewhat related problem in treating “utility” as a one-dimensional quantity that you can add up? Yes, it does. This is one of the most common (and in my view, most compelling) criticisms of utilitarianism.
  - at_a_remove 3y ago
    One of the very muddled thoughts I have in my head, along with Goodhart's Law and AIs which blissfully attempt to convert the universe into paperclips, is that having a single function maximized as a goal seems to give rise to these bizarre scenarios if you begin to scan for their existence. I have started to think that you need at least two functions, in tension, to help forestall this kind of runaway behavior.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      Even "two functions, in tension" still assumes that you can capture values as functions at all. But the reason ethics and morality are hard in the first place is that there are no such functions. We humans have multiple incommensurable, and sometimes incompatible, values that we can't capture with numbers. That means it's not even a matter of not being able to compute the "right" answer; it's that the very concept of there being a single "right" answer doesn't seem to work.
pdonis 3y ago
> a situation that doesn't follow at all from utilitarianism Except that it does according to many utilitarians. That's why it has been a topic of discussion for so long. > you're imagining dividing happiness among more people, but imagining them all with the same amount of suffering No. "Utility" includes both positive (happiness) and negative (suffering) contributions. The "utility" numbers that are quoted in the argument are the net utility numbers after all happiness and all suffering have been included. > You're picturing a drudging life where people work all day and have barely any source of happiness. Or a life with a lot of happiness but also a lot of suffering, so the net utility is close to zero, because the suffering almost cancels out the happiness. (This is one of the key areas where many if not most people's moral intuitions. including mine, do not match up with utilitarianism: happiness and suffering aren't mere numbers and you can't just blithely have them cancel each other that way.) > if you can magically divide up some total amount of happiness, why not the same with suffering? Nothing in the argument contradicts this. The argument is not assuming a specific scenario; it is considering all possible scenarios and finding comparisons between them that follow from utilitiarianism, but do not match up with most people's moral intuitions. It is no answer to the argument to point out that there are other comparisons that don't suffer from this problem; utilitarianism claims to be a universal theory of morality and ethics, so if any possible scenario is a problem for it, then it has a problem. > you're ignoring the fact that people can create happiness for others But "can" isn't the same as "will". The repugnant conclusion takes into account the possibility that adding more people might not have this consequence. The whole point is that utilitarianism (or more precisely the Total Utility version of utilitarianism, which is the most common version) says that a world with more people is better even if the happiness per person goes down, possibly way down (depending on how many more people you add), which is not what most people's moral intuitions say. > It's crazy to think the total amount of happiness to distribute is independent of the world population. The argument never makes this assumption. You are attacking a straw man. Indeed, in the comparisons cited in the argument, the worlds with more people have more total happiness--just less happiness per person.
Murfalo 3y ago
Thank you for this! I have very similar thoughts. Felt like I was going crazy each time I saw these types of conversations sparked by mention of the "repugnant" conclusion...
galaxyLogic 3y ago
Your post reminds me of xenophobes who lament the arrival of immigrants. The immigrants are taking their jobs they are saying. Such a viewpoint can be countered with the imaginary scenario where you live in a country with only 2 people. How well are they doing? There are no stores to buy goodies from because who would create such a store for just 2 people? Perhaps an immigrant, could open a deli! When there are more immigrants who are allowed to work, the immigrants will make some money for themselves. What do they do with that money? They spend it, which grows the economy. Our economy, not some other country's economy. If you were the only living person on this planet you would be in trouble. Thank God for other people being there too.
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  > What do they do with that money? They spend it, which grows the economy. Our economy, not some other country's economy. I'm going to guess you've never spoken to anyone who is sending money back to their family in their original country with every paycheck. Not really the point of this conversation I guess but... yeah. It does happen more than you probably think. To the point where malls in my area have kiosks for wiring money to other countries for cheap.
  - Sai_ 3y ago
    Wouldn’t they be sending left-over money ie, money after spending locally, back to their home country? I can’t imagine a lot of people out there who send all their money back home without spending some of it locally for self sustenance.
  - eru 3y ago
    > I'm going to guess you've never spoken to anyone who is sending money back to their family in their original country with every paycheck. If that sent money ever comes back to the domestic economy, then you are back to the previous situation. If it doesn't come back, that's even better: because then your central bank can print more money to make up for the disappearance. Essentially, you got the foreigner to perform services in return for some ink and paper.
  - 3y ago

by feoren 3y ago

julianeon 3y ago

Here's a simpler way to phrase the problem. The current world population is about 8 billion. By this argument, and also by your argument, it should actually be 999 billion. Or a number even higher than that. The conclusion boils down to: 1. Find maximum population number earth can support. 2. Hit that number. I do think that, when put this way, it seems simplistic.

curiousllama 3y ago
To be fair, boiling something down to a simple statement does indeed tend to produce simplistic statements
olddustytrail 3y ago
Here's an even simpler way to phrase the problem. The current world population is about 8 billion. By my argument it should be 2 billion. Your argument is therefore rather foolish.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

shadowgovt 3y ago

All of this having been said, replacing happiness with revenue makes chasing marginal users make a lot of sense. If you have a sure-fire way to get half the people on the planet to give you $1, you can afford a yacht. Even if it means the tool you make for them only induces them to ever give you that $1 and not more... Why do you care? You have a yacht now. You can contemplate whether you should have made them something more useful from the relative safety and comfort of your yacht.

skybrian 3y ago

Yes, more generally, I’m reminded of David Chapman’s essay, “No Cosmic Meaning” [1]. Thought experiments are a good way to depress yourself if you take them seriously. But I think that utilitarianism has a vague but somewhat related problem in treating “utility” as a one-dimensional quantity that you can add up? There are times when adding things together and doing comparisons makes a kind of sense, but it’s an abstraction. Nothing says you ought to quantify and add things up in a particular way, and utilitarianism doesn’t provide a way of resolving disputes about quantifying and adding. Not that it really tries, because it’s furthermore a metaphor about doing math, which isn’t the same thing as doing math. [1] https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning

pdonis 3y ago
> utilitarianism has a vague but somewhat related problem in treating “utility” as a one-dimensional quantity that you can add up? Yes, it does. This is one of the most common (and in my view, most compelling) criticisms of utilitarianism.
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  One of the very muddled thoughts I have in my head, along with Goodhart's Law and AIs which blissfully attempt to convert the universe into paperclips, is that having a single function maximized as a goal seems to give rise to these bizarre scenarios if you begin to scan for their existence. I have started to think that you need at least two functions, in tension, to help forestall this kind of runaway behavior.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    Even "two functions, in tension" still assumes that you can capture values as functions at all. But the reason ethics and morality are hard in the first place is that there are no such functions. We humans have multiple incommensurable, and sometimes incompatible, values that we can't capture with numbers. That means it's not even a matter of not being able to compute the "right" answer; it's that the very concept of there being a single "right" answer doesn't seem to work.

pdonis 3y ago

> a situation that doesn't follow at all from utilitarianism Except that it does according to many utilitarians. That's why it has been a topic of discussion for so long. > you're imagining dividing happiness among more people, but imagining them all with the same amount of suffering No. "Utility" includes both positive (happiness) and negative (suffering) contributions. The "utility" numbers that are quoted in the argument are the net utility numbers after all happiness and all suffering have been included. > You're picturing a drudging life where people work all day and have barely any source of happiness. Or a life with a lot of happiness but also a lot of suffering, so the net utility is close to zero, because the suffering almost cancels out the happiness. (This is one of the key areas where many if not most people's moral intuitions. including mine, do not match up with utilitarianism: happiness and suffering aren't mere numbers and you can't just blithely have them cancel each other that way.) > if you can magically divide up some total amount of happiness, why not the same with suffering? Nothing in the argument contradicts this. The argument is not assuming a specific scenario; it is considering all possible scenarios and finding comparisons between them that follow from utilitiarianism, but do not match up with most people's moral intuitions. It is no answer to the argument to point out that there are other comparisons that don't suffer from this problem; utilitarianism claims to be a universal theory of morality and ethics, so if any possible scenario is a problem for it, then it has a problem. > you're ignoring the fact that people can create happiness for others But "can" isn't the same as "will". The repugnant conclusion takes into account the possibility that adding more people might not have this consequence. The whole point is that utilitarianism (or more precisely the Total Utility version of utilitarianism, which is the most common version) says that a world with more people is better even if the happiness per person goes down, possibly way down (depending on how many more people you add), which is not what most people's moral intuitions say. > It's crazy to think the total amount of happiness to distribute is independent of the world population. The argument never makes this assumption. You are attacking a straw man. Indeed, in the comparisons cited in the argument, the worlds with more people have more total happiness--just less happiness per person.

Murfalo 3y ago

Thank you for this! I have very similar thoughts. Felt like I was going crazy each time I saw these types of conversations sparked by mention of the "repugnant" conclusion...

galaxyLogic 3y ago

Your post reminds me of xenophobes who lament the arrival of immigrants. The immigrants are taking their jobs they are saying. Such a viewpoint can be countered with the imaginary scenario where you live in a country with only 2 people. How well are they doing? There are no stores to buy goodies from because who would create such a store for just 2 people? Perhaps an immigrant, could open a deli! When there are more immigrants who are allowed to work, the immigrants will make some money for themselves. What do they do with that money? They spend it, which grows the economy. Our economy, not some other country's economy. If you were the only living person on this planet you would be in trouble. Thank God for other people being there too.

bluefirebrand 3y ago
> What do they do with that money? They spend it, which grows the economy. Our economy, not some other country's economy. I'm going to guess you've never spoken to anyone who is sending money back to their family in their original country with every paycheck. Not really the point of this conversation I guess but... yeah. It does happen more than you probably think. To the point where malls in my area have kiosks for wiring money to other countries for cheap.
- Sai_ 3y ago
  Wouldn’t they be sending left-over money ie, money after spending locally, back to their home country? I can’t imagine a lot of people out there who send all their money back home without spending some of it locally for self sustenance.
- eru 3y ago
  > I'm going to guess you've never spoken to anyone who is sending money back to their family in their original country with every paycheck. If that sent money ever comes back to the domestic economy, then you are back to the previous situation. If it doesn't come back, that's even better: because then your central bank can print more money to make up for the disappearance. Essentially, you got the foreigner to perform services in return for some ink and paper.
- 3y ago