Comment on The Mere Cable Channel Addition Paradox

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 21:30:41 GMT

while Ry is only enough to grant some very low number of utilions per person: say .0001

And it doesn't have to stop there, if we imagine some future population Sx who have resources Sy that allows them to get 10^-10 utilions per person, for example.

Part of the original premise of the paradox is that even the people of population Z, the vast population the paradox leads to, still have lives that are "barely worth living." So you can't go that far, the population has to have enough utilons per person that their lives are barely worth living.

Which means that as long as doing so adds some arbitrarily small amount of resources, adding people is a net benefit.

Yes, one weakness in this argument is that it still allows the Mere Addition Paradox to happen if the following criteria are met:

1. The addition of a new person also adds more resources.

2. The amount of new resources added is enough to give the new person a life "barely worth living."

3. The only way to obtain those new resources is to create that new person. The people currently existing would be unable to obtain the resources without creating that person.

I think that my argument is still useful because of the low odds of encountering a situation that fulfills all those criteria, especially 3, in real life. It means that people no longer need to worry that they are committing some horrible moral wrong by not having as many children as possible.

Discuss