I tend to think that exact duplication doesn’t double utility. More of exactly the same isn’t really making things better. So I don’t think millions of exactly identical villages of a few thousand, isolated from one another (else their relationships would undermine the perfect identities between them; they’d be at different places in the pattern of relationships) are more valuable than just one instance of the same village, and if one village is slightly happier than any of the millions of identical villages, the one village is preferable. But between a more normal world of billions of unique, diverse, barely worth living lives, and one village of thousands of almost but not quite a million times happier lives, I guess I think the billions may be the better world if that’s how the total utilitarian math works out. Further, though, I think that while it doesn’t take very much difference for me to think that an additional worthwhile life is an improvement, once you get very, very close to exact duplication, it again stops being as much of an improvement to add people. When you’re talking about, say, a google people instead of mere billions, it seems likely that some of them are going to be getting close enough to being exact duplicates that the decreased value of mere duplication may start affecting the outcome.
I tend to think that exact duplication doesn’t double utility.
I agree.
I guess I think the billions may be the better world if that’s how the total utilitarian math works out.
You don’t have to resign yourself to merely following the math. Total utilitarianism is built on some intuitive ideas. If you don’t like the billions of barely worth living lives, that’s also an intuition. The repugnant conclusion shows some tension between these intuitions, that’s all—you have to decide how to resolve the tension (and it you think that exact duplication doesn’t double utility, you’ve already violated total utilitarian intuitions). “The math” doesn’t dictate how you’ll resolve this—only your choices do.
I tend to think that exact duplication doesn’t double utility. More of exactly the same isn’t really making things better. So I don’t think millions of exactly identical villages of a few thousand, isolated from one another (else their relationships would undermine the perfect identities between them; they’d be at different places in the pattern of relationships) are more valuable than just one instance of the same village, and if one village is slightly happier than any of the millions of identical villages, the one village is preferable. But between a more normal world of billions of unique, diverse, barely worth living lives, and one village of thousands of almost but not quite a million times happier lives, I guess I think the billions may be the better world if that’s how the total utilitarian math works out. Further, though, I think that while it doesn’t take very much difference for me to think that an additional worthwhile life is an improvement, once you get very, very close to exact duplication, it again stops being as much of an improvement to add people. When you’re talking about, say, a google people instead of mere billions, it seems likely that some of them are going to be getting close enough to being exact duplicates that the decreased value of mere duplication may start affecting the outcome.
I agree.
You don’t have to resign yourself to merely following the math. Total utilitarianism is built on some intuitive ideas. If you don’t like the billions of barely worth living lives, that’s also an intuition. The repugnant conclusion shows some tension between these intuitions, that’s all—you have to decide how to resolve the tension (and it you think that exact duplication doesn’t double utility, you’ve already violated total utilitarian intuitions). “The math” doesn’t dictate how you’ll resolve this—only your choices do.
What I meant is that if the utilitarian math favors the billions, that seems intuitively reasonable enough that I have no difficulty accepting it.
That’s fine—you’ve made your population ethics compatible with your intuitions, which is perfectly ok.