The Mere Cable Channel Addition Paradox
The following is a dialogue intended to illustrate what I think may be a serious logical flaw in some of the conclusions drawn from the famous Mere Addition Paradox. EDIT: To make this clearer, the interpretation of the Mere Addition Paradox this post is intended to criticize is the belief that a world consisting of a large population full of lives barely worth living is the optimal world. That is, I am disagreeing with the idea that the best way for a society to use the resources available to it is to create as many lives barely worth living as possible. Several commenters have argued that another interpretation of the Mere Addition Paradox is that a sufficiently large population with a lower quality of life will always be better than a smaller population with a higher quality of life, even if such a society is far from optimal. I agree that my argument does not necessarily refute this interpretation, but think the other interpretation is common enough that it is worth arguing against. EDIT: On the advice of some of the commenters I have added a shorter summary of my argument in non-dialogue form at the end. Since it is shorter I do not think it summarizes my argument as completely as the dialogue, but feel free to read it instead if pressed for time. Bob: Hi, I'm with R&P cable. We're selling premium cable packages to interested customers. We have two packages to start out with that we're sure you love. Package A+ offers a larger selection of basic cable channels and costs $50. Package B offers a larger variety of exotic channels for connoisseurs, it costs $100. If you buy package A+, however, you'll get a 50% discount on B. Alice: That's very nice, but looking at the channel selection, I just don't think that it will provide me with enough utilons. Bob: Utilons? What are those? Alice: They're the unit I use to measure the utility I get from something. I'm really good at shopping, so if I spend my money on the things I usually spend it on I u
The main argument I've heard for this kind of simplification is that your altruistic, morality-type preferences ought to be about the state of the external world because their subject is the wellbeing of other people, and the external world is where other people live. The linearity part is sort of an extension of the principle of treating people equally. I might be steelmanning it... (read more)