I think there’s a big difference between caring about the welfare of future people and caring about bringing future people into existence in the first place. I.e. I think this post is conflating the “totalist” view of population ethics where the morally relevant goal is maximizing the sum of all welfare (number of entities times the average welfare of entities) with the averagist view of population ethics where the morally relevant goal is maximizing average welfare for the entities that exist.
I think there’s a big difference between caring about the welfare of future people and caring about bringing future people into existence in the first place. I.e. I think this post is conflating the “totalist” view of population ethics where the morally relevant goal is maximizing the sum of all welfare (number of entities times the average welfare of entities) with the averagist view of population ethics where the morally relevant goal is maximizing average welfare for the entities that exist.