I do think ‘a disagreement on utility calculations’ may indeed be a big part of it. Are you a total utilitarian? I’m not. A big part of that comes from the fact that I don’t consider two copies of myself to be intrinsically more valuable than one—perhaps instrumentally valuable, if those copies can interact, sync their experiences and cooperate, but that’s another matter. With experience-syncing, I am mostly indifferent to the number of copies of myself to exist (leaving aside potential instrumental benefits), but without it I evaluate decreasing utility as the number of copies increases, as I assign zero terminal value to multiplicity but positive terminal value to the uniqueness of my identity.
My brand of utilitarianism is informed substantially by these preferences. I adhere to neither average nor total utilitarianism, but I lean closer to average. Whilst I would be against the use of force to turn a population of 10 with X utility each into a population of 3 with (X + 1) utility each, I would in isolation consider the latter preferable to the former (there is no inconsistency here—my utility function simply admits information about the past).
I do think ‘a disagreement on utility calculations’ may indeed be a big part of it. Are you a total utilitarian? I’m not. A big part of that comes from the fact that I don’t consider two copies of myself to be intrinsically more valuable than one—perhaps instrumentally valuable, if those copies can interact, sync their experiences and cooperate, but that’s another matter. With experience-syncing, I am mostly indifferent to the number of copies of myself to exist (leaving aside potential instrumental benefits), but without it I evaluate decreasing utility as the number of copies increases, as I assign zero terminal value to multiplicity but positive terminal value to the uniqueness of my identity.
My brand of utilitarianism is informed substantially by these preferences. I adhere to neither average nor total utilitarianism, but I lean closer to average. Whilst I would be against the use of force to turn a population of 10 with X utility each into a population of 3 with (X + 1) utility each, I would in isolation consider the latter preferable to the former (there is no inconsistency here—my utility function simply admits information about the past).
That line of thinking leads directly to recommending immediate probabilistic suicide, or at least indifference to it. No thanks.
How so?