So, um, you think that the life of the chronically malnourished consists of nothing but suffering comparable to that of someone dying from acute starvation??
Not my area of expertise, but for the argument to work they only need to be within maybe an order of magnitude or so. Does that seem plausible?
It’s not a repugnant conclusion to decide that going around killing the chronically malnourished is a good thing—are you quite sure?
It certainly sounds repugnant, but I don’t think it’s equivalent to the Repugnant Conclusion, which is what I was referring to. In any case, you are correct that that would be the logical conclusion to draw from what I said, which is concerning me. Population ethics has always confused me—does anyone have any idea how this one might be resolved?
Well, if they have positive value on the margin, then that means it would be an increase in global utility if a bunch of children were born who were doomed to lives of permanent malnutrition. In fact, it would imply that a morally defensible solution to a Malthusian overpopulation problem would be to let the population explode in third world countries, and then just not let any resources be diverted to them. Heck, a sufficiently underserved African country, for example, could turn into a practically unstopppable utility factory—and quite cheaply!
In all seriousness, I think one of the issues here is that we’re conflating “has positive marginal utility in our utility function” with “considers their own life to be worth living (i.e., doesn’t kill themselves)”, when there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason those should always line up (especially if we’re not preference utilitarians).
Edit: This is a better summary of my line of thinking about this.
when there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason those should always line up
In which case it’s a good, moral, virtuous thing to go kill all those miserable wretches who are so misguided as to consider their own life to be worth living.
But you know what, maybe some good can be extracted out of them. I’ve got a Modest Proposal you might consider....
You may have noticed that I spent the entire first paragraph of my comment making that exact point. Again, I think that gjm summarized my line of thinking about this much better upthread, including laying out the more subtle points that I didn’t make in the parent. I think it should be clear by this point that we’re stuck in a false dilemma, since the two positions we’re considering both lead to highly unpalatable conclusions.
Not my area of expertise, but for the argument to work they only need to be within maybe an order of magnitude or so. Does that seem plausible?
It certainly sounds repugnant, but I don’t think it’s equivalent to the Repugnant Conclusion, which is what I was referring to. In any case, you are correct that that would be the logical conclusion to draw from what I said, which is concerning me. Population ethics has always confused me—does anyone have any idea how this one might be resolved?
I think the root issue is that you consider chronically malnourished lives to be not worth living. Is that so?
Well, if they have positive value on the margin, then that means it would be an increase in global utility if a bunch of children were born who were doomed to lives of permanent malnutrition. In fact, it would imply that a morally defensible solution to a Malthusian overpopulation problem would be to let the population explode in third world countries, and then just not let any resources be diverted to them. Heck, a sufficiently underserved African country, for example, could turn into a practically unstopppable utility factory—and quite cheaply!
In all seriousness, I think one of the issues here is that we’re conflating “has positive marginal utility in our utility function” with “considers their own life to be worth living (i.e., doesn’t kill themselves)”, when there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason those should always line up (especially if we’re not preference utilitarians).
Edit: This is a better summary of my line of thinking about this.
In which case it’s a good, moral, virtuous thing to go kill all those miserable wretches who are so misguided as to consider their own life to be worth living.
But you know what, maybe some good can be extracted out of them. I’ve got a Modest Proposal you might consider....
You may have noticed that I spent the entire first paragraph of my comment making that exact point. Again, I think that gjm summarized my line of thinking about this much better upthread, including laying out the more subtle points that I didn’t make in the parent. I think it should be clear by this point that we’re stuck in a false dilemma, since the two positions we’re considering both lead to highly unpalatable conclusions.