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.
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.