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Nisan comments on The Mere Cable Channel Addition Paradox - Less Wrong Discussion
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If you try to formalize this theory of population ethics, I believe you will find that it's susceptible to Mere Addition type paradoxes. See, for example, articles about "population ethics" and "axiological impossibility theorems" on Gustav Arrhenius' website.
It is, but the important point is that the paradoxes that it is vulnerable to do not seem to mandate reproduction, as a more traditional theory would.
For instance, my theory would say that Planet A with a moderate population of people living excellent lives is better than Planet B with a larger population whose lives are barely worth living. However, it might also say that Galaxy B full of people with lives barely worth living is better than Planet A, because it has so many people that it produces enough value to swamp planet A, even if it does so less efficiently. However, my theory would also say that Galaxy A, which has a somewhat smaller population and a higher quality of life than Galaxy B, is better than Galaxy B.
My theory is not for finding the best population, it is about finding the optimal population. It is about finding what the best possible population is given whatever resource constraints a society has. It does not bother me that you are able to dream up a better society if you remove those resource constraints, such a society might be better, but it would also be using resources less optimally. The best sort of society is one that uses the resources it has available to both create lives worth living, and using resources to enhance the utility of already existing people.
I've come up with a formalization of everything you've said here that I think is a steel man for your position. Somewhat vaguely: A population with homogeneous utility defines a point in a two-dimensional space — one dimension for population size, one for individual utility. Our preferences are represented by a total, transitive, binary relation on that space. The point of the Mere Addition Paradox is that a set of reasonable axioms rules out all preferences. The point you're making is that if we're restricted by resources to some region of that space, then we only need to think about our preferences on a one-dimensional Pareto frontier. And one can easily come up with preferences on that frontier that satisfy all the nice axioms.
Very well. Just so long as the Pareto frontier doesn't change, there is no paradox.
I think you've got it. Thanks for formalizing that for me, I think it will help me a lot in the future!
If you're interested in where I got some of these ideas from, by the way, I derived most of my non-Less Wrong inspiration from the work of philosopher Alan Carter.