Alice: Let's take population "A+" again. Now imagine that instead of having a population of people with lives barely worth living, the second continent is inhabited by a smaller population with the same very high percentage of resources and utility per person as the population of the first continent. Call it "A++. " Would you say "A++" was better than "A+?"

Bob: Sure, definitely.

I don't find this obvious. I also don't find it obvious that A+ is better than A, or even that some people existing is better than no people existing. My ethical intuitions just don't seem to give answers for this kind of thing, even on the personal level of trying to answer the question "On a purely selfish basis, is it better for me, personally, to exist or not to exist?" My usual approach of asking myself "Do I anticipate experiencing pleasure or misery from this situation?" doesn't return an answer that makes any sense, because I can't experience either pleasure or misery if I don't exist.

Suppose I define my utility as pleasure / (misery^2). (Misery is worse than pleasure is good.) If I don't exist, misery is zero, which is wonderful. But my pleasure is also zero, which is terrible. 0/0 is undefined, so when I try to calculate the utility of not existing, all I get is an error. That's the kind of situation I feel like I'm in.