Found this post again after many months. Don’t those who endorse the asymmetry tend to think neutrality is ‘greedy’ in the sense that if you add a mix of happy and unhappy lives, such that future total welfare is positive, then the outcome has zero value? Your approach is the ‘non-greedy’ one where happy lives never contribute towards outcome value and unhappy lives always count against. On the greedy approach, I think it follows we have no reason to worry about the future unless it’s negative. I think Bader supports something like the greedy version. I’m somewhat unsure on this.
Found this post again after many months. Don’t those who endorse the asymmetry tend to think neutrality is ‘greedy’ in the sense that if you add a mix of happy and unhappy lives, such that future total welfare is positive, then the outcome has zero value? Your approach is the ‘non-greedy’ one where happy lives never contribute towards outcome value and unhappy lives always count against. On the greedy approach, I think it follows we have no reason to worry about the future unless it’s negative. I think Bader supports something like the greedy version. I’m somewhat unsure on this.