I broadly agree that “what does a life barely worth living look like” matters a lot, and you could imagine setting it to be high enough that the repugnant conclusion doesn’t look repugnant.
That being said, if you set it too high, there are other counterintuitive conclusions. For example, if you set it higher than people alive today (as it sounds like you’re doing), then you are saying that people alive today have negative terminal value, and (if we ignore instrumental value) it would be better if they didn’t exist.
This seems entirely plausible to me. A couple jokes which may help generate an intuition here (1, 2)
You could argue that suicide rates would be much higher if this were true, but there are lots of reasons people might not commit suicide despite experiencing net-negative utility over the course of their lives.
At the very least, this doesn’t feel as obviously objectionable to me as the other proposed solutions to the “mere addition paradox”.
Someone goes on a hike with others. They’re cold and their feet hurt. They decide to continue the hike to the destination instead of turning around 30% in. They’re not saying their conscious experience during the hike is positive, but they prefer to continue because the hike isn’t (just) about their moment-to-moment experience!
Likewise, with life, many people want to continue their lives for reasons other than “isn’t it wonderful what I experience moment-to-moment?” For instance, we have things we’re curious about, things to look forward to, projects to finish, bucket list items to tick off.
Of course, some people really do live for positive experiences (and are happy on net) – that’s perfectly fine.
Gotta love utilitarian moral philosophers, who will do things like declare that their lives are net-negative and all people ought rationally to commit suicide, because this “doesn’t feel as obviously objectionable to me as the other proposed solutions”! :P
(To be extra clear—I am joking, I do in fact love moral philosophers despite their quirks, I don’t think that the answers to these odd population-ethics questions are obvious even though like everyone I have my opinions and gut reactions.)
I think the main arguments against suicide are that it causes your loved ones a lot of harm, and (for some people) there is a lot of uncertainty in the future. Bracketing really horrible torture scenarios, your life is an option with limited downside risk. So if you suspect your life (really the remaining years of your life) is net-negative, rather than commit suicide you should increase variance because you can only stand to benefit.
I broadly agree that “what does a life barely worth living look like” matters a lot, and you could imagine setting it to be high enough that the repugnant conclusion doesn’t look repugnant.
That being said, if you set it too high, there are other counterintuitive conclusions. For example, if you set it higher than people alive today (as it sounds like you’re doing), then you are saying that people alive today have negative terminal value, and (if we ignore instrumental value) it would be better if they didn’t exist.
This seems entirely plausible to me. A couple jokes which may help generate an intuition here (1, 2)
You could argue that suicide rates would be much higher if this were true, but there are lots of reasons people might not commit suicide despite experiencing net-negative utility over the course of their lives.
At the very least, this doesn’t feel as obviously objectionable to me as the other proposed solutions to the “mere addition paradox”.
Yeah.
Here’s an analogy:
Someone goes on a hike with others. They’re cold and their feet hurt. They decide to continue the hike to the destination instead of turning around 30% in. They’re not saying their conscious experience during the hike is positive, but they prefer to continue because the hike isn’t (just) about their moment-to-moment experience!
Likewise, with life, many people want to continue their lives for reasons other than “isn’t it wonderful what I experience moment-to-moment?” For instance, we have things we’re curious about, things to look forward to, projects to finish, bucket list items to tick off.
Of course, some people really do live for positive experiences (and are happy on net) – that’s perfectly fine.
Gotta love utilitarian moral philosophers, who will do things like declare that their lives are net-negative and all people ought rationally to commit suicide, because this “doesn’t feel as obviously objectionable to me as the other proposed solutions”! :P
(To be extra clear—I am joking, I do in fact love moral philosophers despite their quirks, I don’t think that the answers to these odd population-ethics questions are obvious even though like everyone I have my opinions and gut reactions.)
I think the main arguments against suicide are that it causes your loved ones a lot of harm, and (for some people) there is a lot of uncertainty in the future. Bracketing really horrible torture scenarios, your life is an option with limited downside risk. So if you suspect your life (really the remaining years of your life) is net-negative, rather than commit suicide you should increase variance because you can only stand to benefit.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s clearly unreasonable (though it’s not my intuition).
I agree that suicide rates are not particularly strong evidence one way or the other.