Why do you seem so sure about this? I see no moral argument for whether we should rather have a 7 billion humans or a thousand, all else being equal. (Of course, there’s also no acceptable way to move from the former to the latter.) (Both the availability of commons and the economies of scale for goods, services and research should not play a role in this moral calculus.)
The same way (and to the same level, which is to say “low certainty”) I’m sure about any moral calculus. It matches my intuitions within reasonable bounds, and it’s simple.
I prefer living to not-living, and most humans I’ve asked, observed, or heard about also prefer living over not. I don’t know precisely how to aggregate preferences, but I pretty strongly intuit that adding preferred to preferred never makes dispreferred.
Why do you seem so sure about this? I see no moral argument for whether we should rather have a 7 billion humans or a thousand, all else being equal. (Of course, there’s also no acceptable way to move from the former to the latter.) (Both the availability of commons and the economies of scale for goods, services and research should not play a role in this moral calculus.)
The same way (and to the same level, which is to say “low certainty”) I’m sure about any moral calculus. It matches my intuitions within reasonable bounds, and it’s simple.
I prefer living to not-living, and most humans I’ve asked, observed, or heard about also prefer living over not. I don’t know precisely how to aggregate preferences, but I pretty strongly intuit that adding preferred to preferred never makes dispreferred.