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JGWeissman comments on Skirting the mere addition paradox - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 18 November 2013 05:50PM

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Tags: utility paradox mere_addition_paradox repugnant_conclusion mere_addition

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Comment author: JGWeissman 18 November 2013 06:18:37PM 2 points [-]

For any population of people of happiness h, you can add more people of happiness less than h, and still improve things.

I think that this property, at least the way you are interpreting it, does not fully represent the intuition that leads to the repugnant conclusion. A stronger version would be: For any population of people, you want add more people with positive happiness (keeping the happiness of the already existing people constant), and still improve things.

I don't think your unintuitive aggregation formula would be compatible with that.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 20 November 2013 10:34:00AM 0 points [-]

I think that this property, at least the way you are interpreting it, does not fully represent the intuition that leads to the repugnant conclusion.

I agree. That's why I didn't present my aggregation formula as a counterexample to the mere addition paradox, but merely being connected to it.

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