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TobyBartels comments on The Threat of Cryonics - Less Wrong
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I wrote:
I didn't write that accurately. I should have said:
I even care about people who potentially will exist in proportion to the probability that they will exist, which really should be included in the term ‘actually’.
So for example, I care that the people who become pregnant next year get good prenatal care for the sake of the children that they will bear the year after (as well as for their own sakes).
However, I don't care whether they actually become pregnant, or (given that they do) that those children actually are born, except as this affects them and other actual people. All in all, I wish that fewer people became pregnant and fewer babies were born, for various reasons having to do with how this affects other people, although my main emphasis is that women should have the freedom to choose whether to become and remain pregnant. (So in this vein, I donate to Planned Parenthood, and once did volunteer work for them, and may do so again. This also helps with the prenatal care.)
Then is it fair to say that, all else being equal, for people who don't currently exist, you're indifferent between them having no life and an OK life, and you're indifferent between them having no life and a great life, but you prefer them having a great life to an OK life?
This must be a standard problem in utilitarian theory, but I don't know its name.
In case you haven't read my comment introducing myself, know that my ultimate social value is freedom, a sort of utilitarian calculus where utility is freedom. So to judge whether someone should live, the main question to ask is whether they want to live. (I forgot to say in my reply to MartinB that of course I am against medical treatment of those who do not wish it.)
But those who do not exist do not wish anything. So it doesn't matter.
If by ‘a great life’ you mean a life of great freedom, then I prefer that to the alternative life. But one can only judge what such a life actually is once the person actually exists and has wants. I support prenatal care only on the basis of a prediction about what people will want later, like wanting to be healthy.
It still doesn't hang together mathematically, since I should simply take expected utitlity/freedom. As I also said in my introductory comment, I don't really believe that any utilitarian calculus captures my values. I can understand decision theory once the utilities are assigned, but I don't understand how to assign utilities in the first place.
Pretty sure this is just the flip side of the repugnant conclusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox, which is about whether you should care about average welfare or total welfare.
Thanks, that's it!