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buybuydandavis comments on Is it immoral to have children? - Less Wrong Discussion
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According to what moral theory?
Presumably utilitarianism.
With which utility function?
Does it matter? All of the standard utilitarianisms come to the same conclusion here. It doesn't matter whether you're aggregating preferences, happiness, satisfaction, or wellbeing when the level of global inequality is this high. In all of these systems there are other people who can get far more utility out of a marginal dollar than you can.
The question is how you do the aggregating.
Both total and average give the same result here.
Not if you're comparing states with different numbers of people.
They both give the same result in the sense that "give your money to the best charity" yields far higher aggregate utility than "have a kid".
(As your kid would be one in 7 billion, they're even quite close in how much charity beats reproducing by.)
Careful! Confusing utilitarianism with utility functions can make you very sick and you might have to go to the hospital.
Both Rachels and I are considering consequentialist moral theories that involve valuing the well-being of others. Utilitarianism is one of these, but many lesswrongers value others and are consequentialist without being confident in what would count as utility or believing it scales linearly with people.