Sure. By hypothesis, you would like to make the future more like world B, on the assumption that you get to live there. That’s what “higher utility” means.
But this set of assumptions seems a little too strong to be helpful when deciding questions like “is it the right thing to create a person who’s going to have a fairly average set of experiences?” Because someone with total-utilitarian preferences would do a better job of satisfying their own preferences (i.e. have a higher utility score) by creating this person.
So the question is not “Would I want there to be more people if it lowered my utility-number?” The question is “Would there being more people lower my utility-number?”
Sure. By hypothesis, you would like to make the future more like world B, on the assumption that you get to live there. That’s what “higher utility” means.
But this set of assumptions seems a little too strong to be helpful when deciding questions like “is it the right thing to create a person who’s going to have a fairly average set of experiences?” Because someone with total-utilitarian preferences would do a better job of satisfying their own preferences (i.e. have a higher utility score) by creating this person.
So the question is not “Would I want there to be more people if it lowered my utility-number?” The question is “Would there being more people lower my utility-number?”