I agree that we also have to look at actions, in the sense that even if my biased treatment of my children (treat some well, others badly) would reduce the proportion of suffering children, you might still condemn that because it at least encourages me to not just treat all children well and so to pursue inefficient solutions.
(According to Wikipedia, child sexual abuse affects about 19,7% of female and 7,9% of male children, btw. I’d be careful with using “almost everybody”.)
I do disagree that “1 more suffering person, 3 more happy persons” (or whatever ratio) is better than “no additional people”. I find it non-obvious that it should be true, even just as an intuition. I find the opposite intuition much more plausible.
I think the claim rests on two (somewhat independent) assumptions:
Benefits and harm to a person can be directly compared, so that if I harm you for −3 utilons and benefit you for +5 utilons, that’s equivalent to benefiting you for +2 utilons.
Bringing more people into existence is not bad, at least on average.
Assumption 1) is of course straightforward utilitarianism (in most formulations), but it’s not clear to me at all why it should be true. My previous comment was meant to highlight the fact that I find this assumption (common as it is) absurd, especially because it makes you look at 10+ million slaves and propose that slavery is basically gone, simply because non-slaves drastically outnumber them. It’s not a solid argument (nor intended as one), but at least for me, it’s a stronger illustration of the underlying disgust I feel when considering the closely related Repugnant Conclusion.
Maybe as a different illustration, imagine a room with 3 suffering and 6 happy people in it. If I now bring in 6 more happy people, have I halved the harm inside the room? Have I improved the situation even at all? Of course, this is just an appeal to intuition, not an actual argument, but maybe it demonstrates how “more happy people” is suspect.
Assumption 2) is not obvious either way, I think, but I presently favor denying it, so that more slaves is bad, just as more non-slaves is bad. In other words, just because there are ~6 times more people now than 100 years ago, means that the world is dramatically worse off. So celebrating moral progress when people still breed weirds me out. But of course, this is really not a specific problem with Luke’s post, just an aspect that proportional arguments tend to miss. Basically, I deny “Yay less harm per person!” if you achieved it by making more people in the process.
Of course it’s not inconsistent to accept 1) and 2), or something similar to them, but I find them very alien, almost paperclippy values. (No offense to actual Paperclippers.)
(According to Wikipedia, child sexual abuse affects about 19,7% of female and 7,9% of male children, btw. I’d be careful with using “almost everybody”.)
Oops. (Let’s change “rape” to “rape and eat them while they’re alive”. That should be sufficiently evil, even for humans.)
I think the claim rests on two (somewhat independent) assumptions: …
That’s probably correct. FWIW I think that 1) is true (say 85%) and 2) is also true, but I’m less confident in my judgement (say 65%).
I guess most folks believe that 1) and 2) are true and are much more certain than I am.
Seems like you’re surrounded by Paperclippers.
I agree that we also have to look at actions, in the sense that even if my biased treatment of my children (treat some well, others badly) would reduce the proportion of suffering children, you might still condemn that because it at least encourages me to not just treat all children well and so to pursue inefficient solutions.
(According to Wikipedia, child sexual abuse affects about 19,7% of female and 7,9% of male children, btw. I’d be careful with using “almost everybody”.)
I do disagree that “1 more suffering person, 3 more happy persons” (or whatever ratio) is better than “no additional people”. I find it non-obvious that it should be true, even just as an intuition. I find the opposite intuition much more plausible.
I think the claim rests on two (somewhat independent) assumptions:
Benefits and harm to a person can be directly compared, so that if I harm you for −3 utilons and benefit you for +5 utilons, that’s equivalent to benefiting you for +2 utilons.
Bringing more people into existence is not bad, at least on average.
Assumption 1) is of course straightforward utilitarianism (in most formulations), but it’s not clear to me at all why it should be true. My previous comment was meant to highlight the fact that I find this assumption (common as it is) absurd, especially because it makes you look at 10+ million slaves and propose that slavery is basically gone, simply because non-slaves drastically outnumber them. It’s not a solid argument (nor intended as one), but at least for me, it’s a stronger illustration of the underlying disgust I feel when considering the closely related Repugnant Conclusion.
Maybe as a different illustration, imagine a room with 3 suffering and 6 happy people in it. If I now bring in 6 more happy people, have I halved the harm inside the room? Have I improved the situation even at all? Of course, this is just an appeal to intuition, not an actual argument, but maybe it demonstrates how “more happy people” is suspect.
Assumption 2) is not obvious either way, I think, but I presently favor denying it, so that more slaves is bad, just as more non-slaves is bad. In other words, just because there are ~6 times more people now than 100 years ago, means that the world is dramatically worse off. So celebrating moral progress when people still breed weirds me out. But of course, this is really not a specific problem with Luke’s post, just an aspect that proportional arguments tend to miss. Basically, I deny “Yay less harm per person!” if you achieved it by making more people in the process.
Of course it’s not inconsistent to accept 1) and 2), or something similar to them, but I find them very alien, almost paperclippy values. (No offense to actual Paperclippers.)
Oops. (Let’s change “rape” to “rape and eat them while they’re alive”. That should be sufficiently evil, even for humans.)
That’s probably correct. FWIW I think that 1) is true (say 85%) and 2) is also true, but I’m less confident in my judgement (say 65%). I guess most folks believe that 1) and 2) are true and are much more certain than I am. Seems like you’re surrounded by Paperclippers.