For me (currently with minimalist intuitions), the repugnance depends on whether the lives in the larger population are assumed to never suffer (cf. this section). Judging from the different answers here, people seem to indeed have wildly different interpretations about what those lives feel like.
At one extreme, they could contain absolutely no craving for change and be simply lacking in additional bliss; at the other, they could be roller coaster lives in which extreme craving is assumed to be slightly positively counterbalanced by some of their other moments.
As a practical example, I deny that factory farms could be net positive (all else being equal) regardless of how much bliss the victims could be induced to experience.
For me (currently with minimalist intuitions), the repugnance depends on whether the lives in the larger population are assumed to never suffer (cf. this section). Judging from the different answers here, people seem to indeed have wildly different interpretations about what those lives feel like.
At one extreme, they could contain absolutely no craving for change and be simply lacking in additional bliss; at the other, they could be roller coaster lives in which extreme craving is assumed to be slightly positively counterbalanced by some of their other moments.
As a practical example, I deny that factory farms could be net positive (all else being equal) regardless of how much bliss the victims could be induced to experience.