Might simply also a big portion of status-quo bias and/or omission bias (here both with similar effect) - be at play, helping to explain the typical classification of the conclusion as repugnant?
I think this might be the case when I ask myself whether many people who classify the conclusion as repugnant, would not also have classified as just as repugnant the ‘opposite’ conclusion, if instead they had been offered the same experiment ‘the other way round’:
Start with a world counting huge numbers of lives worth-living-even-if-barely-so, and propose to destroy them all, for the sake of making very few really rich and happy! (Obviously with the nuance that it is the rich few whose net happiness is slightly larger than the sum of the others). It is just a gut feeling, but I’d guess this would evoke similar types of feelings of repugnance very often (maybe even more so than in the original RC experiment?)! A sort of Repugnant Conclusion 2.
Fair point, even if my personal feeling is that it would be the same even without the killing (even if indeed the killing itself indeed would alone suffice too).
We can amend the RC2 attempt to avoid the killing : Start with the world with the seeds for huge numbers of lives worth-living-even-if-barely-so, and propose to destroy that world, for the sake of creating a world for very few really rich and happy! (Obviously with the nuance that it is the rich few whose net happiness is slightly larger than the sum of the others).
My gut feeling does not change about this RC2 still feeling repugnant to many, though I admit I’m less sure and might also be biased now, as in not wanting to feel different, oops.
I moderately agree, but I do think there is commonly an ordering effect here, arising both from the phrasing of the RC and the way people often discuss it.
Might simply also a big portion of status-quo bias and/or omission bias (here both with similar effect) - be at play, helping to explain the typical classification of the conclusion as repugnant?
I think this might be the case when I ask myself whether many people who classify the conclusion as repugnant, would not also have classified as just as repugnant the ‘opposite’ conclusion, if instead they had been offered the same experiment ‘the other way round’:
Start with a world counting huge numbers of lives worth-living-even-if-barely-so, and propose to destroy them all, for the sake of making very few really rich and happy! (Obviously with the nuance that it is the rich few whose net happiness is slightly larger than the sum of the others). It is just a gut feeling, but I’d guess this would evoke similar types of feelings of repugnance very often (maybe even more so than in the original RC experiment?)! A sort of Repugnant Conclusion 2.
I think the killing would probably explain the intuitive repugnance of RC2 most of the time, though.
Fair point, even if my personal feeling is that it would be the same even without the killing (even if indeed the killing itself indeed would alone suffice too).
We can amend the RC2 attempt to avoid the killing : Start with the world with the seeds for huge numbers of lives worth-living-even-if-barely-so, and propose to destroy that world, for the sake of creating a world for very few really rich and happy! (Obviously with the nuance that it is the rich few whose net happiness is slightly larger than the sum of the others).
My gut feeling does not change about this RC2 still feeling repugnant to many, though I admit I’m less sure and might also be biased now, as in not wanting to feel different, oops.
I moderately agree, but I do think there is commonly an ordering effect here, arising both from the phrasing of the RC and the way people often discuss it.