Thanks for this. i just had a similar idea, and ofc I’m glad to see another EA had a similar insight before. I am no expert on the field, but I agree that this “atemporal avg utilitarianism” seems to be underrated; I wonder why.
The greatest problem I see with this view, at first, is that it makes the moral goodness of future actions depend on the population and the goodness of the past. I suspect this would also make it impossible (or intractable) to model goodness as a social welfare function. But then… if the moral POV is the “POV of the universe”, or the POV of nowhere, or of the impartial observer… maybe that’s justified?
And it’d explain the Asymmetry and the use of thresholds for adding people.
I suspect this view is immune to the repugnant conclusion / mere addition paradox. The most piercing objection from total view advocates against avg utilitarianism is that it implies a sadistic conclusion: adding a life worth living makes the world worse if this life is below the average utility; and adding a life with negative value is good if it is superior to the world average.
But if the overall avg utility is positive, or if you add a constraint forbidding adding negative lives… this makes it less likely to find examples where this view implies a “sadistic” conclusion
Thanks for this. i just had a similar idea, and ofc I’m glad to see another EA had a similar insight before. I am no expert on the field, but I agree that this “atemporal avg utilitarianism” seems to be underrated; I wonder why. The greatest problem I see with this view, at first, is that it makes the moral goodness of future actions depend on the population and the goodness of the past. I suspect this would also make it impossible (or intractable) to model goodness as a social welfare function. But then… if the moral POV is the “POV of the universe”, or the POV of nowhere, or of the impartial observer… maybe that’s justified? And it’d explain the Asymmetry and the use of thresholds for adding people.
I suspect this view is immune to the repugnant conclusion / mere addition paradox. The most piercing objection from total view advocates against avg utilitarianism is that it implies a sadistic conclusion: adding a life worth living makes the world worse if this life is below the average utility; and adding a life with negative value is good if it is superior to the world average. But if the overall avg utility is positive, or if you add a constraint forbidding adding negative lives… this makes it less likely to find examples where this view implies a “sadistic” conclusion