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owencb comments on Potential vs already existent people and aggregation - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think they're very different, and I don't think this is due to aggregation.
In the first case, the major difference between the option is the suffering caused. In the second case, the major difference between the two cases is the lives created. The suffering caused seems a very small side-effect in comparison.
In order to drive an intuition that the two cases are the same, you'd have to think that it was exactly neutral to create a person (before the millisecond of torture). This strikes me as highly implausible on any kind of consequentialist position. Even non-consequentialist positions have to have some view of what's appropriate here -- and while you can reasonably get creating the people to be incommensurably good with not doing so, it's similarly implausible to get them to be exactly as good as each other.
This is exactly what I was thinking. In the second case (in which people are created), are we to assume that 3^^^3 people are created either way? Also, will they exist only so long as they are being tortured, or will they exist across lifespans which include time during which they are not being tortured?
Thanks for strengthening my case ^_^
I was trying to demonstrate that the argument for total utilitarianism among existing populations was stronger than for potential populations. I could have mentioned this aspect - I vaguely referred to it in "and not only because the second choice seems more underspecified than the first." But I thought that would be more contentious and debatable, and so focused on the clearest distinction I saw.
Sorry, I don't see the force of your argument here. Because my intuition about the scenarios is dominated by the effect of creating people, which we certainly wouldn't expect to be zero for total utilitarianism, I can't see whether there should be any distinction for aggregation.
Would you be happy changing the second scenario so that we create 3^^^3 people in either case, as AABoyles suggested? If we did that total utilitarianism would say that we should treat it the same as the first case (but my intuition also says this). Or if not that, can you construct another example to factor out the life-creation aspect which is driving most of the replies?
? I don't see your point. You can use aggregation as an argument to be more utilitarian when not creating extra people. But you can't use it when creating lives, as you point out. So the argument is unavailable in this context.
That's the whole point of the post, which I seem to have failed to make clear. Aggregation arguments are available for already created lives, not for the new creation of them.
Yeah, it definitely seems like we're talking past each other here. I think I don't understand what you mean by "aggregation" -- I have a different impression from this comment than from the opening post. Perhaps you can clarify that?
Not sure if this is relevant: From a utilitarian point of view I think you can aggregate when creating lives, but of course the counterfactuals you'll use will change (as mostly what you're trying to work out is how good creating a life is).
Let me try and be careful and clear here.
What I meant by "aggregation" is that when we have to choose between X and Y once, we may have unclear intuitions, but if we have to choose between X and Y multiple times (given certain conditions), the choice is clear (and is Y, for example).
There are two intuitive examples of this. The first is when X causes a definite harm and Y causes a probability of harm, as in http://lesswrong.com/lw/1d5/expected_utility_without_the_independence_axiom/ . The second is the example I gave here, where X causes harm to a small group while Y causes smaller harm to a larger group.
Now, the "certain conditions" can be restrictive (here it is applied repeatedly to a fixed population). I see these aggregation arguments as providing at least some intuitive weight to the idea that Y>X even in the one-shot case. However, as far as I can tell, this aggregation argument (or anything similar) is not available for creating populations. Or do you see an analogous idea?