Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. But the context of our discussion was certainly different! I had suggested to AngryParsley that even if we had next to no understanding of how to modify our minds for the better, uploading would still be useful since we could make 10 copies of ourselves with semi-random changes, and let only the best one propagate; he objected that how did I plan to get rid of the excess 9? By murder was plainly awfully immoral, and my suggestion of forcing them to live out the standard 4 score and 10 only somewhat less so - by not allowing them to be immortal or whatever the selected copy would get, I would be lowering the average. (Going by totals, this of course isn't an issue.)

The Mere Addition Paradox suffices to refute the AVG view. From Nick's link:

Scenario A contains a population in which everybody leads lives well worth living. In A+ there is one group of people as large as the group in A and with the same high quality of life. But A+ also contains a like number of people with a somewhat lower quality of life. In Parfit's terminology A+ is generated from A by “mere addition”. Comparing A and A+ it is reasonable to hold that A+ is better than A or, at least, not worse.

For example, A+ could evolve from A by the choice of some parents to have children whose quality of life is good, though not as good as the average in A. We can even suppose that this makes the parents a little happier, while still lowering the overall average.

Thanks for the link.

And you are right, by Jove, these philosophers really like to go on about it -- ie.the whole issue could be summarized as the question whether we should optimize for AVG(good) or for SUM(good) -- and some variations. A question that ultimately cannot be answered. The length of the bibliography makes it almost comical.