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Dias comments on Stupid Questions Thread - January 2014 - Less Wrong
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Upvoted. Remember to keep in mind the answer might be "making a person is as good as killing a person is bad.
Here's a simple argument for why we can't be indifferent to creating people. Suppose we have three worlds:
Assume we prefer Jon to have 20 utils to 10. Assume also we're indifferent between 10 utils and Jon's. Hence by transitivity we must prefer Jon exist and have 20 utils to Jon's non-existance. So we should try to create Jon, if we think he'll have over 10 utils.
Note that this kind of utilon calculation also equates your scenarios with those where, magically, a whole bunch of people came and ceased to exist a few minutes ago with lots of horrible torture, followed by amnesia, in between.