What if you consider a population of beings with much narrower (expected) welfare ranges or much shorter lives? How many nematodes eating their preferred foods are better than a population of a billion flourishing humans?
A lot of people (including I) lean towards empty individualism.
From an empty individualistic perspective, there is no difference between creating 1 billion people who experience 100 years of bliss and creating 100 billion people who experience 1 year of bliss.
So that version of the RC is easy to bite the bullet on.
I am a negative utilitarian so both would be neutral, in my opinion.
What if you consider a population of beings with much narrower (expected) welfare ranges or much shorter lives? How many nematodes eating their preferred foods are better than a population of a billion flourishing humans?
See also Sebo, 2023 https://ββdoi.org/ββ10.1080/ββ21550085.2023.2200724
Or, you could imagine if humans had extremely short lives, but joyful nonetheless, and in huge numbers.
A lot of people (including I) lean towards empty individualism.
From an empty individualistic perspective, there is no difference between creating 1 billion people who experience 100 years of bliss and creating 100 billion people who experience 1 year of bliss.
So that version of the RC is easy to bite the bullet on.
I am a negative utilitarian so both would be neutral, in my opinion.