There are also Parfit’s original Mere Addition argument and Huemer’s Benign Addition argument for the Repugnant Conclusion. They’re the familiar A≤A+<B arguments, adding a large marginally positive welfare population, and then redistributing the welfare evenly, except with Huemer’s, A<A+, strictly, because those in A are made slightly better off in A+.
I think this kind of argument can be used to show that actualism endorses the RC and Very RC in some cases, because the original world without the extra people does not maximize “self-conditional value” (if the original people in A are better off in A+, via benign addition), whereas B does, using additive aggregation.
I think the Tomi Francis example also only has R maximizing self-conditional value, among the three options, when all three are available. And we could even make the original 100 people worse off than 40 each in R, and this would still hold.
I guess HMVs, presentist and necessitarian views may work to avoid the RC and VRC, but AFAICT, you only get the procreation asymmetry by assuming some kind of asymmetry with these views. And they all have some pretty unusual prescriptions I find unintuitive, even as someone very sympathetic to person-affecting views.
Frick’s conditional interests still seem promising and could maybe be used to justify the procreation asymmetry for some kind of HMV or negative axiology.
There are also Parfit’s original Mere Addition argument and Huemer’s Benign Addition argument for the Repugnant Conclusion. They’re the familiar A≤A+<B arguments, adding a large marginally positive welfare population, and then redistributing the welfare evenly, except with Huemer’s, A<A+, strictly, because those in A are made slightly better off in A+.
Huemer’s is here: https://philpapers.org/rec/HUEIDO
I think this kind of argument can be used to show that actualism endorses the RC and Very RC in some cases, because the original world without the extra people does not maximize “self-conditional value” (if the original people in A are better off in A+, via benign addition), whereas B does, using additive aggregation.
I think the Tomi Francis example also only has R maximizing self-conditional value, among the three options, when all three are available. And we could even make the original 100 people worse off than 40 each in R, and this would still hold.
Voting methods extending from pairwise comparisons also don’t seem to avoid the problem, either: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fqynQ4bxsXsAhR79c/teruji-thomas-the-asymmetry-uncertainty-and-the-long-term?commentId=ockB2ZCyyD8SfTKtL
I guess HMVs, presentist and necessitarian views may work to avoid the RC and VRC, but AFAICT, you only get the procreation asymmetry by assuming some kind of asymmetry with these views. And they all have some pretty unusual prescriptions I find unintuitive, even as someone very sympathetic to person-affecting views.
Frick’s conditional interests still seem promising and could maybe be used to justify the procreation asymmetry for some kind of HMV or negative axiology.