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Kaj_Sotala comments on Put Yourself in Manual Mode (aka Shut Up and Multiply) - Less Wrong Discussion
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Wait what? That's the direct opposite of the Sadistic Conclusion. If the Sadistic Conclusion was commonly accepted, then people would abstain from using contraception if they thought that they could create new suffering-filled lives that way. And if they thought their kids were about to live happy lives, they might try to arrange it so that the kids would live miserable lives instead.
That's not the Sadistic Conclusion as presented by Arrhenius. Arrhenius' Sadistic Conclusion is that, if it is bad to add more people with positive welfare, then it might be less bad to add someone with negative welfare instead of a large amount of people with positive welfare. Obviously the amount of people with negative welfare must be considerably smaller than the amount of people with positive welfare in order for the math to check out.
Under Arrhenius' Sadistic Conclusion adding unhappy, miserable lives is still a very bad thing. It makes the world a worse place, and adding no one at all would be preferable. Adding a miserable life isn't good, it's just less bad than adding a huge amount of lives barely worth living. Personally, I think the conclusion is misnamed, since it doesn't consider adding suffering people to be good.
Okay, you're right that the Sadistic Conclusion does consider it better to avoid adding any people at all, and says that it's better to add people with negative welfare only if we are in a situation where we have to add someone.
So you're saying that by spending resources on not creating the new lives, people are essentially choosing the "create a life with negative welfare" option, but instead of creating a new life with negative welfare, an equivalent amount is subtracted from their own welfare. Am I understanding you correctly?
Yes, that's what I was trying to say.