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Dias comments on Bayesian Adjustment Does Not Defeat Existential Risk Charity - Less Wrong
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You care about the deaths of people without caring about people?
What if I changed the example - and it's about whether or not to help educate the child, or comport her, or feed her. Do we are about the education, hunger and happiness of the child also, without caring about the child?
You can say that a death averted or delayed is a good thing without being committed to saying that a birth is a good thing. That's the point I was trying to make.
Similarly, you can "care about people" in the sense that you think that, given that a person exists, they should have a good life, without thinking that a world with people who have good lives is better than a world with no people at all.
No you can't. Consider three worlds, only differing with regards person A.
Which world is best? As we agree that people who exist should have a good life, U(1) > U(2). Assume U(2)=U(3), as per your suggest that we're unconcerned about people's existence/non-existence. Therefore, by transitivity of preference, U(1) > U(3). So we do care about A's existence or non-existence.
But U(3) = U(2) doesn't reflect what I was suggesting. There's nothing wrong with assuming U(3) ≥ U(1). You can care about A even though you think that it would have been better if they hadn't been born. You're right, though, about the conclusion that it's difficult to be unconcerned with a person's existence. Cases of true indifference about a person's birth will be rare.
Personally, I can imagine a world with arbitrarily happy people and it doesn't feel better to me than a world where those people are never been born; and this doesn't feel inconsistent. And as long as the utility I can derive from people's happiness is bounded, it isn't.