Scenario (1) creates 100 years of utility, minus the death of one person. Scenario (2) creates 100 years of utility, plus the birth of one person, minus the death of two people. We can set them equal to each other and solve for the variables, you should prefer scenario (1) to scenario (2) iff the negative utility caused by a death is greater than the utility caused by a birth. Imagine that a child was born, and then immediately died ten minutes later. Is this a net positive or negative utility? I vote negative and I think most people agree; death outweighs birth.
(As an interesting sidenote, if we lived in a world where the value of Birth outweighed the value of Death, I think most of us would happily change our preference ordering. Eg, If we lived in the Children of Men world, we’d go with scenario (2) because a new birth is more important than a new death. Or if we lived in a universe where there really was a heaven, we’d go with scenario (2) as well because the value of death would be near zero.)
Things get less simple when we take into account the fact that all years and deaths don’t generate equal (dis)utility. The disutility caused by Death(newborn) != Death(10 year old) != Death (20 year old) != Death (80 year old) != Death (200 year old). Similarly, the utility generated by a child’s 3rd->4th year is nowhere near equivalent to the utility of someone’s 18th->19th year. I would assume the external utility generated by someone 101st->200th year to far, far outweigh the external utility generated by the 1st->100th year (contributing to the world by being a valuable source of wisdom). By any reasonable calculations it seems that net utility in scenario (1) significantly outweighs the net utility of scenario (2).
Different people might have different expected values for the utility and disutility of years/deaths, and thus get differing results. But it seems if you had sufficiently accurate data with which to calculate expected utility, you could actually determine what those utilities are and they wouldn’t come out equal. However, just because something is incredibly hard to calculate doesn’t mean you throw your hands up and say that they must be equal. You do what you always do with insufficient information: approximate as best you can, double check your numbers, and hope you don’t miss anything.
I’m not sure about the Children of Men example: a birth in that situation is only important in that it implies MORE possible births. If it doesn’t, I still say that a death outweighs a birth.
But here’s another extremely inconvenient possible world:
People aren’t ‘born’ in the normal sense—instead they are ‘fluctuated’ into existence as full-grown adults. Instead of normal ‘death’, people simply dissolve painlessly after a given amount of time. Nobody is aware that at some point in the future they will ‘die’, and whenever someone does all currently existing people have their memories instantly modified to remove any trace of them.
I still prefer option (1) in this scenario, but I’m much less confident of it.
People aren’t ‘born’ in the normal sense—instead they are ‘fluctuated’ into existence as full-grown adults. Instead of normal ‘death’, people simply dissolve painlessly after a given amount of time. Nobody is aware that at some point in the future they will ‘die’, and whenever someone does all currently existing people have their memories instantly modified to remove any trace of them.
This scenario is way, way worse than the real world we live in. It’s bad enough that some of my friends and loved ones are dead. I don’t want to lose my memories of them too. The social connections people form with others are one of the most important aspects of their lives. If you kill someone and destroy all their connections at the same time you’ve harmed them far more badly than if you just killed them.
Plus, there’s also the practical fact that if you are unaware of when you will “dissolve” it will be impossible for you to plan your life to properly maximize your own utility. What if you had the choice between going to a good movie today, and a great movie next week, and were going to dissolve tomorrow? If you didn’t know that you were going to dissolve you’d pick the great movie next week, and would die having had less fun than you otherwise could have had.
I’d prefer option 1 in this scenario, and in any other, because the title of the OP is a misnomer, people can’t be replaced. The idea that you are “replacing” someone if you create a new person after they die implies that people are not valuable, they are merely containers for holding what is really valuable (happiness, utility, etc.), and that it does not matter if a container is destroyed as long as you can make a new one to transfer its contents into. I completely disagree with this approach. Utility is valuable because people are valuable, not the other way around. A world with lower utility where less people have died is better than a world of higher utility with more death.
I don’t see how this is a paradox at all.
Scenario (1) creates 100 years of utility, minus the death of one person. Scenario (2) creates 100 years of utility, plus the birth of one person, minus the death of two people. We can set them equal to each other and solve for the variables, you should prefer scenario (1) to scenario (2) iff the negative utility caused by a death is greater than the utility caused by a birth. Imagine that a child was born, and then immediately died ten minutes later. Is this a net positive or negative utility? I vote negative and I think most people agree; death outweighs birth.
(As an interesting sidenote, if we lived in a world where the value of Birth outweighed the value of Death, I think most of us would happily change our preference ordering. Eg, If we lived in the Children of Men world, we’d go with scenario (2) because a new birth is more important than a new death. Or if we lived in a universe where there really was a heaven, we’d go with scenario (2) as well because the value of death would be near zero.)
Things get less simple when we take into account the fact that all years and deaths don’t generate equal (dis)utility. The disutility caused by Death(newborn) != Death(10 year old) != Death (20 year old) != Death (80 year old) != Death (200 year old). Similarly, the utility generated by a child’s 3rd->4th year is nowhere near equivalent to the utility of someone’s 18th->19th year. I would assume the external utility generated by someone 101st->200th year to far, far outweigh the external utility generated by the 1st->100th year (contributing to the world by being a valuable source of wisdom). By any reasonable calculations it seems that net utility in scenario (1) significantly outweighs the net utility of scenario (2).
Different people might have different expected values for the utility and disutility of years/deaths, and thus get differing results. But it seems if you had sufficiently accurate data with which to calculate expected utility, you could actually determine what those utilities are and they wouldn’t come out equal. However, just because something is incredibly hard to calculate doesn’t mean you throw your hands up and say that they must be equal. You do what you always do with insufficient information: approximate as best you can, double check your numbers, and hope you don’t miss anything.
I’m not sure about the Children of Men example: a birth in that situation is only important in that it implies MORE possible births. If it doesn’t, I still say that a death outweighs a birth.
But here’s another extremely inconvenient possible world:
People aren’t ‘born’ in the normal sense—instead they are ‘fluctuated’ into existence as full-grown adults. Instead of normal ‘death’, people simply dissolve painlessly after a given amount of time. Nobody is aware that at some point in the future they will ‘die’, and whenever someone does all currently existing people have their memories instantly modified to remove any trace of them.
I still prefer option (1) in this scenario, but I’m much less confident of it.
This scenario is way, way worse than the real world we live in. It’s bad enough that some of my friends and loved ones are dead. I don’t want to lose my memories of them too. The social connections people form with others are one of the most important aspects of their lives. If you kill someone and destroy all their connections at the same time you’ve harmed them far more badly than if you just killed them.
Plus, there’s also the practical fact that if you are unaware of when you will “dissolve” it will be impossible for you to plan your life to properly maximize your own utility. What if you had the choice between going to a good movie today, and a great movie next week, and were going to dissolve tomorrow? If you didn’t know that you were going to dissolve you’d pick the great movie next week, and would die having had less fun than you otherwise could have had.
I’d prefer option 1 in this scenario, and in any other, because the title of the OP is a misnomer, people can’t be replaced. The idea that you are “replacing” someone if you create a new person after they die implies that people are not valuable, they are merely containers for holding what is really valuable (happiness, utility, etc.), and that it does not matter if a container is destroyed as long as you can make a new one to transfer its contents into. I completely disagree with this approach. Utility is valuable because people are valuable, not the other way around. A world with lower utility where less people have died is better than a world of higher utility with more death.