I’ll write more on this but for now, I’ll just state my beliefs without really explaining why I believe them:
Asking ’how should I feel about adding a life is the wrong kind of question to ask
The right question to ask is ’what is valuable in life, and will this be present in that person’s life
It’s not clear that we have a good concept of identity that persist over time but separate people
We should evaluate actions based on their impact on people’s lives, treating all people equally—present or future (or possibly past, depending on your moral system and philosophy of physics), local or far away, existent or not-yet-existent.
All population ethical systems have some unintuitive consequences. It’s a matter of picking the best. (or formulating a compromise)
If you try to make a bonus or a penalty for each life created, then you get weird results, and it becomes even less intuitive.
To the extent that we take a hard-line utilitarian view, we should judge the creation of lives purely based on the life that is created, without bonuses or penalties.
I’ll write more on this but for now, I’ll just state my beliefs without really explaining why I believe them:
Asking ’how should I feel about adding a life is the wrong kind of question to ask
The right question to ask is ’what is valuable in life, and will this be present in that person’s life
It’s not clear that we have a good concept of identity that persist over time but separate people
We should evaluate actions based on their impact on people’s lives, treating all people equally—present or future (or possibly past, depending on your moral system and philosophy of physics), local or far away, existent or not-yet-existent.
All population ethical systems have some unintuitive consequences. It’s a matter of picking the best. (or formulating a compromise)
If you try to make a bonus or a penalty for each life created, then you get weird results, and it becomes even less intuitive.
To the extent that we take a hard-line utilitarian view, we should judge the creation of lives purely based on the life that is created, without bonuses or penalties.