I think I’m already pretty familiar with thinking around this. What I don’t know is if there is any way to get people who have different intuitions around these questions to converge or to switch intuitions.
So I’m pro-natalist in part because I see potential people who do not exist, but who might someday exist as being the sort of people who I can either help (by increasing their odds of someday existing and having a good life, or decreasing their odds of existing and having a bad life) or harm (by doing the opposite).
At a deep level this describes my feelings when I imagine the nearly infinite number of potential humans, when I imagine what my state was before I was conceived, and when I think about how happy I am to be alive, and how grateful I am that I got the chance to exist, when it easily could have been someone else, or when humanity easily could have failed to evolve at all.
So I very, very much intuitively feel like if I bring someone into existence who will have a good life, I just did something very nice for them. If I make it so that they don’t come into existence, I did something extremely unkind to them.
And this intuition connects to all sorts of other identities and feelings I have, decisions I make, things I wish I had or could do, etc. As closely as I can tell it is deeply embedded in me.
It possibly has to do with the fact that I was homeschooled, so I never got bullied in school, and that I am thirty eight, and a couple of weeks ago I had some nasty mouth ulcers, and I realized that this was the physically most unpleasant thing I’ve ever gone through. What I’m saying, is I haven’t ever actually suffered, and this feeds into my into my intuitions about the goodness of life.
But ultimately: I am pronatalist because I care about people who do not exist, and who therefore cannot either suffer or feel happiness. I am pronatalist because I think that it is possible to do something beneficial to individuals who do not currently exist, and who might never exist. It is not because I don’t understand that they don’t exist.
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that most people who adopt a sort of pure longtermist utilitarianism already understand your argument here, but have different intuitions about it.
I think I’m already pretty familiar with thinking around this. What I don’t know is if there is any way to get people who have different intuitions around these questions to converge or to switch intuitions.
So I’m pro-natalist in part because I see potential people who do not exist, but who might someday exist as being the sort of people who I can either help (by increasing their odds of someday existing and having a good life, or decreasing their odds of existing and having a bad life) or harm (by doing the opposite).
At a deep level this describes my feelings when I imagine the nearly infinite number of potential humans, when I imagine what my state was before I was conceived, and when I think about how happy I am to be alive, and how grateful I am that I got the chance to exist, when it easily could have been someone else, or when humanity easily could have failed to evolve at all.
So I very, very much intuitively feel like if I bring someone into existence who will have a good life, I just did something very nice for them. If I make it so that they don’t come into existence, I did something extremely unkind to them.
And this intuition connects to all sorts of other identities and feelings I have, decisions I make, things I wish I had or could do, etc. As closely as I can tell it is deeply embedded in me.
It possibly has to do with the fact that I was homeschooled, so I never got bullied in school, and that I am thirty eight, and a couple of weeks ago I had some nasty mouth ulcers, and I realized that this was the physically most unpleasant thing I’ve ever gone through. What I’m saying, is I haven’t ever actually suffered, and this feeds into my into my intuitions about the goodness of life.
But ultimately: I am pronatalist because I care about people who do not exist, and who therefore cannot either suffer or feel happiness. I am pronatalist because I think that it is possible to do something beneficial to individuals who do not currently exist, and who might never exist. It is not because I don’t understand that they don’t exist.
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that most people who adopt a sort of pure longtermist utilitarianism already understand your argument here, but have different intuitions about it.