Thanks for the feedback! As a matter of fact, I agree that the second scenario is worse. My aim was to undermine the ‘intuition of neutrality’—the claim that we have no reason to create additional happy lives. Perhaps it’ll help to state the argument in the form of a syllogism:
Premise: If the government can either (A) save an expected 7 million human lives now and another expected 8 million over the next thousand years or (b) save humanity from destruction, it’s at least as good to do (B).
Intuition of Neutrality: It’s good to save or improve existing lives, but it isn’t good to create new ones. (Or to quote Jan Narveson, ‘We are in favor of making people happy, but neutral about making happy people.’ )
If the government adopts policy A, it will save 17 million lives in expectation.
If the government adopts policy B, it will save 8 million lives in expectation.
∴ Policy A will save more existing lives in expectation than policy B (by 3 and 4)
∴ If the Intuition of Neutrality is correct, policy A must be better than policy B (by 2 and 5)
But policy A is not better than policy B (by 1)
∴ The Intuition of Neutrality must be false (by 6 and 7).
I don’t think 6 follows. Preventing the early deaths of future people does not imply creating new lives or making happy people. The two statements in each version of the intuition of neutrality separated by the “but” here are not actually exhaustive of how we should treat future people.
Thanks for the feedback! As a matter of fact, I agree that the second scenario is worse. My aim was to undermine the ‘intuition of neutrality’—the claim that we have no reason to create additional happy lives. Perhaps it’ll help to state the argument in the form of a syllogism:
Premise: If the government can either (A) save an expected 7 million human lives now and another expected 8 million over the next thousand years or (b) save humanity from destruction, it’s at least as good to do (B).
Intuition of Neutrality: It’s good to save or improve existing lives, but it isn’t good to create new ones. (Or to quote Jan Narveson, ‘We are in favor of making people happy, but neutral about making happy people.’ )
If the government adopts policy A, it will save 17 million lives in expectation.
If the government adopts policy B, it will save 8 million lives in expectation.
∴ Policy A will save more existing lives in expectation than policy B (by 3 and 4)
∴ If the Intuition of Neutrality is correct, policy A must be better than policy B (by 2 and 5)
But policy A is not better than policy B (by 1)
∴ The Intuition of Neutrality must be false (by 6 and 7).
I don’t think 6 follows. Preventing the early deaths of future people does not imply creating new lives or making happy people. The two statements in each version of the intuition of neutrality separated by the “but” here are not actually exhaustive of how we should treat future people.