ericyu3 comments on If interventions changing population size are cheap, they may be the best option independent of your population ethics - Less Wrong

6 Post author: ericyu3 13 August 2014 03:03AM

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Comment author: ericyu3 17 August 2014 10:57:13PM 0 points [-]

I assumed that the effect of the intervention is "small enough relative to the world" for your population ethics to be smooth. For average utilitarianism in particular, this corresponds to the percentage change in population being small. In your scenario, this isn't true, since there are only 2 people, but in the real world it holds up very well. Just 1% of the world population is 70 million people, and virtually no intervention (except for things like existential risk reduction) could cause such a large population change.