Executive summary: The perceived repugnancy of the Repugnant Conclusion in population ethics is often due to poorly chosen utility function parameters or misunderstandings, and the focus should be on estimating realistic utility functions using knowledge from economics and health science rather than seeking radical approaches to circumvent it.
Key points:
The undesirability of the Repugnant Conclusion arises from intuitive discomfort with extreme scenarios, not inherent flaws in the concept.
The author argues for a utility function with monotonically increasing relationships between total utility and both population size and average happiness, a threshold for a life worth living, and the existence of welfare tradeoffs.
If conclusions seem odd at extremes, it’s more likely due to mistaken parameters or intuitions than fundamental issues with the utility function.
The author finds many proposed “solutions” in population ethics, such as averagism, person-affecting theories, and rejecting transitivity, to be unlikely or to not actually address the Repugnant Conclusion.
The author disagrees with the view that the Repugnant Conclusion represents a severe problem for ethics and decision-making.
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Executive summary: The perceived repugnancy of the Repugnant Conclusion in population ethics is often due to poorly chosen utility function parameters or misunderstandings, and the focus should be on estimating realistic utility functions using knowledge from economics and health science rather than seeking radical approaches to circumvent it.
Key points:
The undesirability of the Repugnant Conclusion arises from intuitive discomfort with extreme scenarios, not inherent flaws in the concept.
The author argues for a utility function with monotonically increasing relationships between total utility and both population size and average happiness, a threshold for a life worth living, and the existence of welfare tradeoffs.
If conclusions seem odd at extremes, it’s more likely due to mistaken parameters or intuitions than fundamental issues with the utility function.
The author finds many proposed “solutions” in population ethics, such as averagism, person-affecting theories, and rejecting transitivity, to be unlikely or to not actually address the Repugnant Conclusion.
The author disagrees with the view that the Repugnant Conclusion represents a severe problem for ethics and decision-making.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.