(note: I use the phrase “net happiness” to mean the sum of all happiness in the future minus the sum of all suffering in the future)
completely eliminates second-order effects (and I answered accordingly). However, I suspect many people will consider second-order effects anyway. If something is sufficiently strange, I think explicitly stating it, even in unambiguous language, it is often not enough; you have to make it super-extra clear.
Agreed. Take the unhappy pregnant parent raising the hypothetically future happy child—unfortunately I just couldn’t decouple this.
As an unhappy parent, my unhappiness gets transmitted to my children, and their unhappiness feeds back to me in a negative feedback loop. We’re all unhappy. (And, indeed, the literature on postpartum depression and its resultant effects on children are quite clear on this as well—it’s not just my personal experience.)
My rationalisation of this is that I’m a negative utilitarian and I’m not a longtermist—I don’t think the future child’s theoretical happiness can outweigh the the mother’s present unhappiness.
But in actuality I think it’s probably a decoupling issue.
One comment: taken literally, this description
completely eliminates second-order effects (and I answered accordingly). However, I suspect many people will consider second-order effects anyway. If something is sufficiently strange, I think explicitly stating it, even in unambiguous language, it is often not enough; you have to make it super-extra clear.
Agreed. Take the unhappy pregnant parent raising the hypothetically future happy child—unfortunately I just couldn’t decouple this.
As an unhappy parent, my unhappiness gets transmitted to my children, and their unhappiness feeds back to me in a negative feedback loop. We’re all unhappy. (And, indeed, the literature on postpartum depression and its resultant effects on children are quite clear on this as well—it’s not just my personal experience.)
My rationalisation of this is that I’m a negative utilitarian and I’m not a longtermist—I don’t think the future child’s theoretical happiness can outweigh the the mother’s present unhappiness.
But in actuality I think it’s probably a decoupling issue.