The repugnance of the repugnant conclusion in no way stems from the fact that the people involved are in the future.
It doesn’t? That’s not my impression. In particular:
There are current generation perfect analogues of the repugnant conclusion. Imagine you could provide a medicine that provides a low quality life to billions of currently existing people or provide a different medicine to a much smaller number of people giving them brilliant lives.
But people don’t find these cases intuitively identical, right? I imagine that in the current-generation case, most people who oppose the repugnant conclusion instead favor egalitarian solutions, granting small benefits to many (though I haven’t seen any data on this, so I’d be curious if you disagree!). Whereas when debating who to bring into existence, people who oppose the repugnant conclusion aren’t just indifferent about what happens to these merely-possible people; they actively think that the happy, tiny population is better.
So the tricky thing is that people intuitively support granting small benefits to many already existing people above large benefits to a few already existing people, but don’t want to extend this to creating many barely-good lives above creating a few really good ones.
Hi, The A population and the Z population are both composed of merely possible future people, so person-affecting intuitions can’t ground the repugnance. Some impartialist theories (critical level utilitaianism) are explicitly designed to avoid the repugnant conclusion.
The case is analogous to the debate in aggregation about whether one should cure a billion headaches or save someone’s life.
When considering whether to cure a billion headaches or save someone’s life, I’d guess that people’s prioritarian intuition would kick in, and say that it’s better to save the single life. However, when considering whether to cure a billion headaches or to increase one person’s life from ok to awesome, I imagine that most people prefer to cure a billion headaches. I think this latter situation is more analogous to the repugnant conclusion. Since people’s intuition differ in this case and in the repugnant conclusion, I claim that “The repugnance of the repugnant conclusion in no way stems from the fact that the people involved are in the future” is incorrect. The fact that the repugnant conclusion concerns is about merely possible people clearly matters for people’s intuition in some way.
I agree that the repugnace can’t be grounded by saying that merely possible people don’t matter at all. But there are other possible mechanics that treat merely possible people differently from existing people, that can ground the repugnance. For example, the paper that we’re discussing under!
It doesn’t? That’s not my impression. In particular:
But people don’t find these cases intuitively identical, right? I imagine that in the current-generation case, most people who oppose the repugnant conclusion instead favor egalitarian solutions, granting small benefits to many (though I haven’t seen any data on this, so I’d be curious if you disagree!). Whereas when debating who to bring into existence, people who oppose the repugnant conclusion aren’t just indifferent about what happens to these merely-possible people; they actively think that the happy, tiny population is better.
So the tricky thing is that people intuitively support granting small benefits to many already existing people above large benefits to a few already existing people, but don’t want to extend this to creating many barely-good lives above creating a few really good ones.
Hi, The A population and the Z population are both composed of merely possible future people, so person-affecting intuitions can’t ground the repugnance. Some impartialist theories (critical level utilitaianism) are explicitly designed to avoid the repugnant conclusion.
The case is analogous to the debate in aggregation about whether one should cure a billion headaches or save someone’s life.
When considering whether to cure a billion headaches or save someone’s life, I’d guess that people’s prioritarian intuition would kick in, and say that it’s better to save the single life. However, when considering whether to cure a billion headaches or to increase one person’s life from ok to awesome, I imagine that most people prefer to cure a billion headaches. I think this latter situation is more analogous to the repugnant conclusion. Since people’s intuition differ in this case and in the repugnant conclusion, I claim that “The repugnance of the repugnant conclusion in no way stems from the fact that the people involved are in the future” is incorrect. The fact that the repugnant conclusion concerns is about merely possible people clearly matters for people’s intuition in some way.
I agree that the repugnace can’t be grounded by saying that merely possible people don’t matter at all. But there are other possible mechanics that treat merely possible people differently from existing people, that can ground the repugnance. For example, the paper that we’re discussing under!