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owencb comments on Potential vs already existent people and aggregation - Less Wrong Discussion
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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?