Perhaps we should run a survey, ask people if they have a neutral range. Can they give values of X, Y and Z such that if they would experience X, Y and Z units of some welfare determining components, they would be indifferent between that experience and non-existence, whereas if they had X+dX, Y and Z units, they would state a positive welfare and X-dX, Y and Z units would correspond with a negative welfare. I’m personally very skeptical that most people’s neutral ranges are zero. You claim to have a zero neutral range?
So my view is that if I have (X,Y,Z) at (0,0,0), which is equal to nonexistence, then (.01,0,0) is positive and (-.01,0,0) is negative. Why wouldn’t it be? Why wouldn’t a life with a slight positive and no negatives be positive? And presumably, say, (.01,0,-.00000001) will also be positive.
I think people frequently conflate there being no reason for something and there being very little reason. E.g., they’ll say “there is no evidence for a flat earth” when there is obviously some evidence for it (that some people believe in it is some evidence). If people say (.01,0,0) is not better than non-existence, I’d suspect that’s what they’re doing.
Ok, let me exaggerate a bit. Assume when state S=(X,Y,Z)=(87455.668741, −258.142567, −11024.441253), you are indifferent with nonexistence. Now consider state S’=(87455.668741, −258.142567, −11024.441153). You can confidently say that S’ gives you a positive welfare? If yes: close your eyes and write down, for the given X and Y of state S, a value of Z that gives you a positive welfare lower than S’. I bet your brains are too small to do this exercise. Now consider a nematode with much smaller brains....
So I understand: are you denying that the life with a tiny bit of positive welfare and no negative welfare, or the life with a tiny bit of positive welfare and a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny bit of negative welfare, is determinately net positive? If so, I think that is an important crux. I don’t see why that would be.
I guess it had better not be a question of whether, as a matter of actual fact, I have the brainpower to do the exercise (with my eyes closed!). Babies, I assume, have no concept of their own non-existence, and so can’t compare any state they’re in to non-existence, yet they can have positive or negative welfare. Or someone who lives long enough will not be able to remember, much less bring to mind, everything that’s happened in their life, yet they can have a positive or negative welfare. So what matters is, if anything, some kind of idealized comparison I may or may not be able to do in actual fact. (And in any event, I guess the argument here would not be that nematodes have indeterminate welfare because their range is small, but rather that they do because they are stupid.)
What I’m suggesting could be the case is a situation where, say, the correct weighting of X vs Z is not a precise ratio but a range—anything between 7.9:1 and 8:1, let’s say for the sake of argument—such that the actual ratio falls into this indeterminate range, and a small change in either direction will not cause a departure from the range. I see how that could perhaps be the case. But that kind of indeterminacy is orthogonal to the size of the welfare range. It would still hold if the values were .087455668741 and .011024441253 or 87455668741 and 11024441253, and wouldn’t hold if the values were .087455668741 and .010024441253.
You raised a good point. Yes, I guess I agree that when there is only a positive experience and no negative, the welfare is definitely positive, even if the positive experience is very small. But thinks get tricky when there are both positive and negative experiences, as is the case for almost all sentient beings, and probably also for nematodes if they are sentient. The more welfare is composed of positive and negative parts, the more difficult it becomes to compare it with a zero welfare level. Might have to do with information processing capacity. Adding up many positives and negatives is more difficult that considering a single positive or negative value. Evaluating mixed experiences (with both positive and negative parts) might require a more coarse-grained approach. The level of coarse-graining might relate to the neutral range: the more coarse-graining is used, the wider the neutral range.
Perhaps we should run a survey, ask people if they have a neutral range. Can they give values of X, Y and Z such that if they would experience X, Y and Z units of some welfare determining components, they would be indifferent between that experience and non-existence, whereas if they had X+dX, Y and Z units, they would state a positive welfare and X-dX, Y and Z units would correspond with a negative welfare. I’m personally very skeptical that most people’s neutral ranges are zero. You claim to have a zero neutral range?
So my view is that if I have (X,Y,Z) at (0,0,0), which is equal to nonexistence, then (.01,0,0) is positive and (-.01,0,0) is negative. Why wouldn’t it be? Why wouldn’t a life with a slight positive and no negatives be positive? And presumably, say, (.01,0,-.00000001) will also be positive.
I think people frequently conflate there being no reason for something and there being very little reason. E.g., they’ll say “there is no evidence for a flat earth” when there is obviously some evidence for it (that some people believe in it is some evidence). If people say (.01,0,0) is not better than non-existence, I’d suspect that’s what they’re doing.
Ok, let me exaggerate a bit. Assume when state S=(X,Y,Z)=(87455.668741, −258.142567, −11024.441253), you are indifferent with nonexistence. Now consider state S’=(87455.668741, −258.142567, −11024.441153). You can confidently say that S’ gives you a positive welfare? If yes: close your eyes and write down, for the given X and Y of state S, a value of Z that gives you a positive welfare lower than S’. I bet your brains are too small to do this exercise. Now consider a nematode with much smaller brains....
So I understand: are you denying that the life with a tiny bit of positive welfare and no negative welfare, or the life with a tiny bit of positive welfare and a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny bit of negative welfare, is determinately net positive? If so, I think that is an important crux. I don’t see why that would be.
I guess it had better not be a question of whether, as a matter of actual fact, I have the brainpower to do the exercise (with my eyes closed!). Babies, I assume, have no concept of their own non-existence, and so can’t compare any state they’re in to non-existence, yet they can have positive or negative welfare. Or someone who lives long enough will not be able to remember, much less bring to mind, everything that’s happened in their life, yet they can have a positive or negative welfare. So what matters is, if anything, some kind of idealized comparison I may or may not be able to do in actual fact. (And in any event, I guess the argument here would not be that nematodes have indeterminate welfare because their range is small, but rather that they do because they are stupid.)
What I’m suggesting could be the case is a situation where, say, the correct weighting of X vs Z is not a precise ratio but a range—anything between 7.9:1 and 8:1, let’s say for the sake of argument—such that the actual ratio falls into this indeterminate range, and a small change in either direction will not cause a departure from the range. I see how that could perhaps be the case. But that kind of indeterminacy is orthogonal to the size of the welfare range. It would still hold if the values were .087455668741 and .011024441253 or 87455668741 and 11024441253, and wouldn’t hold if the values were .087455668741 and .010024441253.
You raised a good point. Yes, I guess I agree that when there is only a positive experience and no negative, the welfare is definitely positive, even if the positive experience is very small. But thinks get tricky when there are both positive and negative experiences, as is the case for almost all sentient beings, and probably also for nematodes if they are sentient. The more welfare is composed of positive and negative parts, the more difficult it becomes to compare it with a zero welfare level. Might have to do with information processing capacity. Adding up many positives and negatives is more difficult that considering a single positive or negative value. Evaluating mixed experiences (with both positive and negative parts) might require a more coarse-grained approach. The level of coarse-graining might relate to the neutral range: the more coarse-graining is used, the wider the neutral range.