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jkaufman comments on The Argument From Marginal Cases - Less Wrong Discussion
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(Opportunity cost.)
I don't understand. Take just the two gametes which ended up combining into the infant, t-10 months before the scenario in which your "expect them to at some point have moral value, so maximizing over all time means we should include them" applies.
Why doesn't it apply to the two gametes, why does it apply 10 months later? Is it because the pregnancy is such a big investment? What about if the woman finds the pregnancy utilon-neutral, would the argument translate then?
Let's go up a step. I'm some kind of total utilitarian, which means maximizing over all creatures of moral worth over all time. I don't think gametes have moral worth in and of themselves, and very small children probably don't either, but both do have the potential to grow into creatures that can have positive or negative lives. The goal is, in the long term, to have as many such creatures as possible having the best lives possible.
While "using all your gametes" isn't possible, most people could reproduce much more than they currently do. Parenting takes a lot of time, however, and with time being a limited resource there's lots of other things you can do with time. Many of these have a much larger effect on improving welfare or increasing the all-time number of people than raising children. It's also not clear whether a higher or lower rate of human childbirth is ideal in the long term.