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owencb comments on Embracing the "sadistic" conclusion - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 13 February 2014 10:30AM

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Tags: population total_utilitarianism repugnant repugnant_conclusion utilitarianism population_ethics sadistic_conclusion

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Comment author: owencb 17 February 2014 10:40:15AM *  0 points [-]

My understanding is that they would apply even stronger - more extraneous factors you add, the more likely you are to get one or more of the impossibility results (eg you can get the sadist conclusion in "total utilitarianism + intrinsic value for art").

I think you're confused here. The impossibility result is the theorem that says you get one of these apparently undesirable conclusions. It's a theorem about the class of axiologies which are welfarist (so depend only on personal welfare levels). If you look at a wider class of axiologies, the theorem doesn't apply. Of course some of them may additionally get one of these conclusions as well. It's also possible that we could extend the theorem to a slightly larger class.

Here's another, equivalent, statement of the theorem:

Any system of population ethics does at least one of the following:

  1. Embraces the repugnant conclusion;
  2. Embraces the sadistic conclusion;
  3. Embraces the anti-egalitarian conclusion;
  4. Is not welfarist.
Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 17 February 2014 11:28:10AM 0 points [-]

Mixed systems (welfarist+other stuff) still fall prey to the argument. You can see this by holding "other stuff" constant, and considering the choices between populations that differ only in welfare. Or you can allow "other stuff" to vary, which makes it easy to violate more of the six conditions (the Dominance principle, the Addition principle, the Minimal Non-Extreme Priority principle, the Repugnant conclusion, the Sadistic conclusion, and the Anti-Egalitarian conclusion), maybe violating them all.

Comment author: owencb 17 February 2014 11:35:38AM 0 points [-]

It doesn't seem clear that it is always possible to keep "other stuff" constant when varying welfare?

I guess I don't see how you're defining mixed systems. My first version makes any axiology at all "mixed", since you can just take the reliance on welfare to be trivial (which is a trivial example of a welfarist system).

If you have broader theorems about violating this set of conditions, they would be very interesting to know about.

Comment author: owencb 17 February 2014 12:33:50PM 0 points [-]

Actually I'm not sure the anti-egalitarian conclusion is even well-formed for non-welfarist systems. You can look at welfare levels (if you think those exist) to get what looks like a form of the conclusion, but then we might say that what looks like it's anti-egalitarian is not better because of the less equal arrangement of welfare, but for some other, non-welfare, reasons. Which doesn't seem necessarily pathological (if you are happy with non-welfare reasons entering in).

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