When I think about having children, and I wonder if they’d be happy, overall, I visualize my own childhood and think about ways it could be different; and I think about my adulthood and how my childhood affected it. I don’t remember ever thinking about the aging and death of my counterfactual kids; or how the process of senescence and death—which I have no subjective idea about—would affect the total utility of their lifespan.
When I think about having children, and I wonder if they’d be happy, overall, I visualize my own childhood and think about ways it could be different; and I think about my adulthood and how my childhood affected it. I don’t remember ever thinking about the aging and death of my counterfactual kids; or how the process of senescence and death—which I have no subjective idea about—would affect the total utility of their lifespan.