To answer your question, a proponent of the Asymmetry would likely respond by saying that helping miserable people get better, is better than just killing them. — darthbarracuda

Well we would all agree there. But that then admits to the possibility of a socially-organised escape from misery. Which ought to put us straight back into ordinary utilitarian style discussions.

Indeed many symmetry-advocates have outright proclaimed that they deny the Asymmetry despite finding it incredibly appealing. — darthbarracuda

But how can it be appealing if it's bare calculus warrants active subtraction just as much, if not more, than the prevention of addition coupled to natural wastage?

Over time, the asymmetry would only result in a nullity. Whereas the subtraction of miserable people from the population results in a perfectly happy populace. And +1 is clearly better than 0 when it comes to the sums. Not to kill off the miserable while producing as great a population of the happy as possible would be a positive crime, if we take this kind of calculation at its face value.

It's why I think the Asymmetry is so intuitive, it's why I think David Benatar's antinatalistic asymmetry is so intuitive, it's why the mere-addition paradox is so repugnant, etc. We seem to have, regardless of what we consciously argue for, an inherent negative utilitarian-like disposition. — darthbarracuda

Who is this "we"? Personally it strikes me as a PC version of fascist eugenics. Humans are against nature and therefore should be extinguished. Give the planet back to the bugs and fungi.

So yes, we can take a compassionate view about the suffering of others. We can wish for a better world. And feeling inadequate to the task of making it a better world, we can then decide the final solution is to remove the problem by removing the sufferers - antinatalism merely seeming to be the kindest approach to this holocaust against folk having a freedom to choose and act on their own accord.

Do you really believe you have the right to deny a future generation to fix what your generation seems to be failing to fix (and I say "seeming" as the evidence being given is so slight that it is routinely talked up to the skies)?

Perhaps you can re-describe the asymmetry in a way I can follow its intuitive appeal. I still only see that its natural logic demands we start subtracting the miserable immediately for their own good.

That is of course a repugnant idea. But largely because you can't create a happy world in that kind of binary fashion. Talk about happiness as an ideal, as opposed to the ideal of the adaptive balance - some notion of social flow and fit - is where the whole analysis starts to go wrong. It is not even the proper measure of anything here. And so therefore neither is this obsession with pain and suffering.

Suffering isn't the end of the world, just a normal aspect of life. Or to put it another way, it is what it feels like to be pointing towards death instead of life. If you are getting pain that intense, that's your signal you are getting down to your last chance to stay alive.

So suffering - in nature - is affirmation that life is in fact valued. It is the fate better than death. And yet you want to take away the gift of life for untold generations of the unborn! Isn't that PC eugenics?

Not to kill off the miserable while producing as great a population of the happy as possible would be a positive crime, if we take this kind of calculation at its face value. — apokrisis

Which is exactly why I said that we have inherent negative-utilitarian dispositions. No amount of pleasure can justify a torture, or a murder, i.e. instrumentality.

Who is this "we"? Personally it strikes me as a PC version of fascist eugenics. Humans are against nature and therefore should be extinguished. Give the planet back to the bugs and fungi. — apokrisis

.....what? Where did you get that from? Also many bugs are speculated to be able to feel pain, in particular the arthropods.

So yes, we can take a compassionate view about the suffering of others. We can wish for a better world. And feeling inadequate to the task of making it a better world, we can then decide the final solution is to remove the problem by removing the sufferers - antinatalism merely seeming to be the kindest approach to this holocaust against folk having a freedom to choose and act on their own accord. — apokrisis

Yes! (without the murder part). Your rights do not extend to the manipulation of other people against their will. This includes birth as well as murder. Typically I'd say we value personal value over impersonal value anyway so the idea that we ought to kill miserable people for the sake of some abstract impersonal value is a bit convoluted. But this is of course another issue that needs to be addressed. Which is why I had previously said this entire problem as a whole tends to keep me up at night: it's a twisting and confusing rabbit hole. One solution brings up other problems and other issues that hadn't been noticed before. Coherentism ftw.

Do you really believe you have the right to deny a future generation to fix what your generation seems to be failing to fix (and I say "seeming" as the evidence being given is so slight that it is routinely talked up to the skies)? — apokrisis

To be quite honest with you I don't understand how you actually can see this as a legitimate view. Do you really believe you have the right to force a future generation to fix what our generation is failing to fix? i.e. instrumentalizing future generations without their consent? All because you think that the culture you live in is somehow more important than the individual liberty of other people?

This is where metaphysical issues of possible people, counterfactuals, rights, and obligations start to take precedence.

This is also where antinatalism can be a potential gamechanger in this debate. We don't need a procreative population ethics because we don't need to procreate nor have a population to begin with. Meanwhile every other affirmative ethical system must struggle with these problems.

Perhaps you can re-describe the asymmetry in a way I can follow its intuitive appeal. I still only see that its natural logic demands we start subtracting the miserable immediately for their own good. — apokrisis

No, it wouldn't be for their own good, it would be for an abstract impersonal good. Which I also find to be repugnant.

That is of course a repugnant idea. But largely of course because you can't create a happy world in that kind of binary fashion. Talk about happiness as an idea, as opposed to adaptive balance - some notion of flow and fit - is where the whole analysis starts to go wrong. It is not even the proper measure of anything here. And so therefore neither is this obsession with pain and suffering. — apokrisis

Again you're replacing the immediacy of phenomenological experience with a holistic behaviorism. Which is just wrong, sorry.

Or to put it another way, it is what it feels like to be pointing towards death instead of life. If you are getting pain that intense, that's your signal you are getting down to your last chance to stay alive. — apokrisis

Agreed, although this signal is extremely painful and ultimately traumatic.

Suffering isn't the end of the world, just a normal aspect of life. — apokrisis

I disagree, suffering is a notification that your world, your experiences are likely to end. Plus it's very painful.

So suffering - in nature - is affirmation that life is in fact valued. It is the fate better than death. And yet you want to take away the gift of life for untold generations of the unborn! Isn't that PC eugenics? — apokrisis

No, suffering in nature is the affirmation of life without the person suffering consenting to life. It's the body's way of forcing a person to do something, i.e. enslavement, i.e. instrumentality.

Clearly a suicidal person who jumps off a building is suffering, and clearly this is not an affirmation of life nor an affirmation of the value of life, rather the complete opposite.

And no, it's not eugenics, because eugenics is all about finding the perfect, ideal organism, and antinatalism is usually focused on the fact that there are no perfect, ideal organisms.

apokrisis — darthbarracuda

Typically I'd say we value personal value over impersonal value anyway so the idea that we ought to kill miserable people for the sake of some abstract impersonal value is a bit convoluted. — darthbarracuda

But don't you routinely extrapolate from the personal to the general in this fashion? It is not the suffering within your own experience that is the issue for you but the impersonal fact that suffering exists. So yes, this is "convoluted". Which is what I thought I had argued.

Do you really believe you have the right to force a future generation to fix what our generation is failing to fix? i.e. instrumentalizing future generations without their consent? — darthbarracuda

I talked of their right to a choice in the matter. So equally they could decide to make their existence as miserable as they like.

But clearly, if it is admitted that suffering exists due to things that can be changed, then the fact we seem to be doing a poor job - your claim, not mine necessarily - doesn't give us the right to take away that opportunity from future generations.

This is also where antinatalism can be a potential gamechanger in this debate. We don't need a procreative population ethics because we don't need to procreate nor have a population to begin with. — darthbarracuda

But it could only be a personal choice not to have kids. And should your partner and family, or even society, have no say at all here? It is not clear you automatically would have this right. And indeed, a society in which its population ceased to breed might be within its right to take a more coercive stance. Or if the cult of antinatalism got to widespread, again a society might want to protect itself against such an antisocial threat.

So to the degree you define this as a personal choice, then this leaves open the ethical issue of what kind of choice does social and biological level organisation in all this?

No, it wouldn't be for their own good, it would be for an abstract impersonal good. Which I also find to be repugnant. — darthbarracuda

But you are giving them the gift of removing their suffering according to you. No amount of pleasure could justify even a paper cut or the risk of a horrible death in a fiery car crash, remember? So it is entirely for their own good.

No, suffering in nature is the affirmation of life without the person suffering consenting to life. It's the body's way of forcing a person to do something, i.e. enslavement, i.e. instrumentality. — darthbarracuda

OK, it gets weird when you talk about personhood as if it could be disembodied. All natural logic breaks down here.

clearly a suicidal person who jumps off a building is suffering, and clearly this is not an affirmation of life nor an affirmation of the value of life, rather the complete opposite. — darthbarracuda

Err yeah. But now we are into a position where suicide is taken to be the right choice and so all sufferers should be assisted off the top of the nearest high rise if they can't do it for themselves.

So either you respect the majority choice or we are into the business of removing that choice because we can't tolerate people being self-deluding and enslaved to their own corporeal bodies.

And no, it's not eugenics, because eugenics is all about finding the perfect, ideal organism, and antinatalism is usually focused on the fact that there are no perfect, ideal organisms. — darthbarracuda

It is eugenics because it shows a fascist intolerance of imperfection. The goal is to eliminate unwanted population traits. And the solution is as final as it gets.

What dilemma? Asymmetry, at least as you've summed it up, is not at all compelling or intuitive for me. But symmetry is. Who is it that finds it so? Has there been a survey or something? — Sapientia

I'm surprised you don't find it at least somewhat compelling. The idea that we have an obligation to bring happy people into existence seems to be a bit too strong.

But don't you routinely extrapolate from the personal to the general in this fashion? It is not the suffering within your own experience that is the issue for you but the impersonal fact that suffering exists. So yes, this is "convoluted". Which is what I thought I had argued. — apokrisis

We do extrapolate from the personal to the impersonal, but only by recognizing that the impersonal value exists in virtue of the fact that personal value exist. We reduce suffering because we care about an abstract cosmic notion but because we care about the individuals themselves who are suffering. The abstract notion becomes a tool to evaluate large states of affairs.

I talked of their right to a choice in the matter. So equally they could decide to make their existence as miserable as they like. — apokrisis

Somehow I doubt that people consciously make their lives as miserable as possible without good reason.

But clearly, if it is admitted that suffering exists due to things that can be changed, then the fact we seem to be doing a poor job - your claim, not mine necessarily - doesn't give us the right to take away that opportunity from future generations. — apokrisis

But this leads to the rather absurd claim that masturbating or abstaining from sex is morally wrong because you are taking the opportunity away from possible future generations to exist. So once again we approach a slippery slope - you want birth to be permissible, but you likely don't want an obligation to bring children into existence. Yet that's exactly what is being debated here - the relative value between misery and joy and our obligations related to them. Antinatalism is not the primary focus here, the Asymmetry is, and antinatalism is just but one possible way of approaching the situation (by removing the situation).

But it could only be a personal choice not to have kids. And should your partner and family, or even society, have no say at all here? It is not clear you automatically would have this right. And indeed, a society in which its population ceased to breed might be within its right to take a more coercive stance. Or if the cult of antinatalism got to widespread, again a society might want to protect itself against such an antisocial threat. — apokrisis

I don't understand what you're getting at here. Nor do I understand why you called antinatalism a cult. But anyway this is getting off topic.

No amount of pleasure could justify even a paper cut or the risk of a horrible death in a fiery car crash, remember? — apokrisis

Correction: no amount of pleasure can justify the pain of another person, and no amount of pleasure can compensate for terminal pains regardless of who is experiencing them. Paper cuts are a strawman.

OK, it gets weird when you talk about personhood as if it could be disembodied. All natural logic breaks down here. — apokrisis

How so? How is it illogical to think that I am somewhat enslaved to my own body, when I am hungry, thirsty, need to use the toilet, or age? Basic Buddhist concept: we are not in control of our own bodies. For if we were, we would be able to stop aging, or stop feeling hungry. Instead we are leashed up by the body and forced to do things regardless of how we feel about it.

But now we are into a position where suicide is taken to be the right choice and so all sufferers should be assisted off the top of the nearest high rise if they can't do it for themselves. — apokrisis

...where did you get that from?

It is eugenics because it shows a fascist intolerance of imperfection. The goal is to eliminate unwanted population traits. And the solution is as final as it gets. — apokrisis

I mean, you can slap the label "fascist" on whatever you like, that doesn't make it fascist. Are you intolerant of illogical arguments? Are you intolerant of cancer, one of the most useless and traumatic biological problems? Are you intolerant of ISIS blowing up children? All of these are imperfections, yet you're not a fascist by opposing them.

In any case I have to wonder why you would be opposed to perfection. Indeed Plato, Aristotle, and others all thought that there were the Forms, or the Telos, or whatnot that we ought to strive to instantiate. They wouldn't have looked too kindly on imperfection. And yet here you are being apologetic for the inherent imperfection of nature...why? Why is imperfection acceptable? Why is mediocrity acceptable? Seems to me that tolerating imperfection is a form of apathy, a weakness of the will. An inherent unjustified affirmation of the normal.

I have to wonder why you would be opposed to perfection. — darthbarracuda

Quis costodies custodiet? Who gets to decide what is perfect and by what authority? It is a huge assumption that suffering and pain form no part of a perfect existence. As a sufferer from chronic depression myself I do not see my illness as an imperfection that must be eradicated at all costs. Burden though it be there are definitely aspects of it that are beneficial to me and to others, that are life affirming and good. There are many ways in which I'm perfectly happy being miserable thank-you very much. Are you really so sure that there are no such things as necessary evils?

There really is no great difference between the position you are defending and the worst totalitarian idealism. It is eugenics pure and simple. It is but a petty distinction between knocking people on the head and forcing them to be 'cured' of anything that prevents them being happy little citizens. There are more and worse ways of dying than the simple cessation of brain activity.

If perfection means what you are saying it means then the only rational response is to oppose it with every last scrap of our humanity.

Are you really so sure that there are no such things as necessary evils? — Barry Etheridge

This is part of the Asymmetry: there doesn't seem to be any need to make happy people. But there does seem to be a need in making people happy. The difference is in terms of assistance - in the latter, we are helping those who are suffering become happy. In the former, we are making happy people. The former is concerned with welfare, the latter is concerned with the value of a state of affairs.

And it seems to me that the act of creation should only occur if we want and can be reasonably certain that the result is going to be perfect, i.e. up-to-standards. And it's clear from a cursory look at the human condition that the results fall awfully short most of the time.

I'm surprised you don't find it at least somewhat compelling. The idea that we have an obligation to bring happy people into existence seems to be a bit too strong. — darthbarracuda

I did say "as you summed it up", and that isn't how you summed it up. You summed it up in terms of making the world better or worse, rather than in terms of obligation.

But even if I grant you this point, I think that that alone is not a good reason to reach any conclusion. Perhaps the most important thing that it misses is that this obligation to prevent misery entails much, much more than that, and, taking that into account, it is certainly found to be counterintuitive, rather than intuitive, by the vast majority.

But again you are using a definition of perfect which is effectively 'not like this Universe' when it is entirely possible that this Universe is as in fact as good as it gets, that a more perfect Universe it is not possible to bring into being. In other words by 'up to standards' you really mean up to your wholly subjective standards not, as you should mean, up to the standards of the Universe creators watchdog..

Indeed that was the view of Zapffe, that the Universe is incapable of delivering enough for us. This kind of thought can also be seen in the Gnostics and even Plato.

One of the easiest and yet also one of the most difficult, imo, thought experiments relates to "totalist" consequentialism: adding happy people to the universe's population does not initially seem to be important, pressing, or perhaps even good. It seems like there's literally no difference between there being a happy person and no persons at all.

And yet, sometimes it can seem as though there is. Say you can press two buttons. The left button generates a universe with 3 happy people. The right button generates a universe with 4 happy people. Which do you pick? Does it matter which you pick? Perhaps the small number of people makes it seem unimportant. But what if the first universe has a million happy people, and the second universe has a trillion happy people? Now it actually seems like there's something substantial here. That's a lot of happy people.

The fact that two universes, both with happy people, can nevertheless be compared to each other in terms of value makes it seem as though population of happy people is indeed important.

A related idea here is that it is difficult to feel empathy towards people who are already happy, unless you're celebrating some accomplishment, if you're not yourself currently happy. Happiness does not seem important. And yet I think the next time you consider yourself in a happy state of mind and consider the totalist's population theory, you will agree that it would indeed be a good thing to maximize the amount of people who are experiencing what you are, because what you are experiencing is good and what is good is what ought to be maximized.

Now of course this seems to theoretically open the door to forced childbirth. But I think this is easily avoided when we consider our inherent prioritization of suffering over happiness. Forcing a person to have a child will cause them to feel bad, and a sufferer is more important than a happy person for reasons that I still have yet to completely figure out but still find it to be practically unrefutably intuitive.

In any case I have to wonder why you would be opposed to perfection. Indeed Plato, Aristotle, and others all thought that there were the Forms, or the Telos, or whatnot that we ought to strive to instantiate. They wouldn't have looked too kindly on imperfection. And yet here you are being apologetic for the inherent imperfection of nature...why? Why is imperfection acceptable? Why is mediocrity acceptable? Seems to me that tolerating imperfection is a form of apathy, a weakness of the will. An inherent unjustified affirmation of the normal. — darthbarracuda

You are using very emotional language here. My position of course is that the ideal only speaks of the general limits of existence - and by the same token, limits are only approached, never reached. Then furthermore, the general limits of nature always take the form of complementary poles of being. Therefore the true "ideal" state is always one of some kind of balance between any two complementary poles that define being.

You can talk about such dynamical balances as "mediocre" or "imperfect". But that just shows your metaphysics is fundamentally unrealistic. You are not even understanding the message that metaphysics wants to deliver when it comes to the (self)organisation of nature.

We are just going to go around in circles until you can understand the ground of your own arguments. You are presuming that having two poles of being - like pain and pleasure - is "unnatural" as you would want monistically "only pleasure/no pain". But in evolutionary terms, pain and pleasure exist as boundary states. They are there as extremes so psychologically there then exists the great variety of possible states of balance inbetween.

For anything to exist - phenomenologically - there must be the extremes which together allow the spectrum of what then actually is.

And if we are then talking about the ideal state of this lived spectrum, then somewhere about the middle of it - a state of vague contentment - would seem the natural balance.

However then we have to include the fact that this mentality is meant to be adaptive and learning. So now its "ideal form" has to have an element of irritability. It must be a content balance that is suitably easily disturbed and restless so as to be able to respond to a changing environment.

And here too we find that nature strikes just such a balancing act. It trades off the contentment of stable habit with the irritability of restless attention.

And then even beyond this, nature makes this trade-off over a natural life cycle. An immature organism is all irritability, minimal habit. An immature organism is striving so as to learn. Then at the other end of a life - senescence - creative intelligence becomes dominated by passive wisdom. The balance is tipped towards a life of well-adapted routine, an existence of well-established habit.

So what is natural is complexity of this kind. Once we get away from monistic simplicity and start thinking triadically - seeing ontology developmentally as a business of dialectical separation and then hierarchical mixing - then we get the kind of elaboration upon elaboration that starts to resemble the lives we really lead, the world we really exist within.

You can talk about such dynamical balances as "mediocre" or "imperfect". But that just shows your metaphysics is fundamentally unrealistic. You are not even understanding the message that metaphysics wants to deliver when it comes to the (self)organisation of nature. — apokrisis

I don't think you understand how not all axiology or aesthetics is realist in nature. Any value is going to be subjective, depending on the existence of a mind. This changes nothing.

For anything to exist - phenomenologically - there must be the extremes which together allow the spectrum of what then actually is. — apokrisis

And yet there is distinct shift between pleasure and pain, a shift from what we like and what we dislike, what we want and what we don't want. There is no gray area that isn't accompanied by some sort of anxiety.

Perhaps you're thinking more about moods than brute sensory experience. But this changes very little. Indeed suffering seems to be an emotional experience that is almost always accompanied by physical pain. We cannot be happy when we experience great and unrequested pain. Yet curiously we can feel great pleasure and yet still feel empty and cold inside. The more generalized principle then would be that we have two pressing concerns: avoid painful stimuli and cultivate pleasurable stimuli, and neither are guaranteed.

I can't help but wonder that if you got lost in the woods one day and faced a cold winter's night, if you wouldn't reconsider the duality of what I'm saying here. Your metaphysics, no matter what it's validity is, would have very little importance. Again people like to think they are complex, in control of who they are, and powerful, but when faced with the aforementioned scenario they inevitably fall into mania or depression. "Where is you God metaphysics now?"

I don't think you understand how not all axiology or aesthetics is realist in nature. Any value is going to be subjective, depending on the existence of a mind. — darthbarracuda

What I don't "understand" is the dualism this kind of comment relies upon.

I argue from naturalism. So in the end, your talk of "selves" and "experience" has to be a socially constructed delusion - a way of talking that makes sense, and yet in the end, doesn't make sense.

The world of "subjective opinions" - axiology and aesthetics - is clearly real in being culturally constructed in pursuit of naturalistic social goals. A linguistic artifact. To talk about it as if it inhabits some ideal Platonic realm - a realm of the "mind" - is unreal.

Perhaps you're thinking more about moods than brute sensory experience. — darthbarracuda

From a neuroscience perspective, these are just different spatiotemporal scales of adaptation. So they are not fundamentally different.

Faced with this kind of complexity, you of course will immediately seek to reduce things to the simplicities that best fit your style of arguing.

I can't help but wonder that if you got lost in the woods one day and faced a cold winter's night, if you wouldn't reconsider the duality of what I'm saying here. Your metaphysics, no matter what it's validity is, would have very little importance. Again people like to think they are complex, in control of who they are, and powerful, but when faced with the aforementioned scenario they inevitably fall into mania or depression. — darthbarracuda

To claim that such an outcome is inevitable is nuts. Being lost in the woods for a night doesn't even sound traumatic, just embarrassing.

Of course we can be well adapted to our worlds as we have so far experienced them, but then nature can throw down its further surprises and "our sense of mastery will prove an optimistic illusion".

This is true, but that is already factored into a general model of life as an anticipatory system - one that develops habits of coping while retaining a capacity for further learning.

To claim that such an outcome is inevitable is nuts. Being lost in the woods for a night doesn't even sound traumatic, just embarrassing. — apokrisis

Being lost in the woods when it's negative ten degrees out and snowing and you have no tent or warm clothes because you barely survived a plane crash in the Siberian tundra. Not a walk in the park, in fact probably a death sentence (just look at Stalingrad - and they even had resources).

Being lost in the woods when it's negative ten degrees out and snowing and you have no tent or warm clothes because you barely survived a plane crash in the Siberian tundra. Not a walk in the park, in fact probably a death sentence (just look at Stalingrad - and they even had resources). — darthbarracuda

LOL. Every papercut a potential Holocaust in your hands!

Why don't you just throw me off a skyscrapper and ask me how I really feel about that during my plummet to the ground? Recant yet Apo!

If you had a strong argument, it would be able to deal with the everyday mundanity of existence. You wouldn't need to pile disaster upon disaster.

If you had a strong argument, it would be able to deal with the everyday mundanity of existence. You wouldn't need to pile disaster upon disaster. — apokrisis

So the disaster, catastrophe, tragedy, etc are material arguments. You're sweeping them away as if they're unimportant yet they still are an astute observation, something that cannot easily be denied or justified, as if the seriousness of them isn't implied in the definitions. In fact, they're what I see to be the pessimist's trump card - if nothing else convinces someone, the idea of horrible pain and terror might, not in a threatening way but in an illuminating way. The realization that one is a ticking time bomb. It's not a crutch as you seem to believe it to be, it's an observable and real fact. There cannot be poetry after Auschwitz.

it would be able to deal with the everyday mundanity of existence. — apokrisis

So you accept that everyday existence is mundane (i.e. dull, unoriginal, repetitive, boring, tedious, annoying...everything I have been saying for the past week or so). A direct contradiction to what you had previously said regarding the "richness" of everyday experience.

Now who's going on circles? Cause I sure as hell am being as consistent as I can.

There cannot be poetry after Auschwitz. — darthbarracuda

And yet there was - https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jan/11/poetry-after-auschwitz

So you accept that everyday existence is mundane (i.e. dull, unoriginal, repetitive, boring, tedious, annoying...everything I have been saying for the past week or so). A direct contradiction to what you had previously said regarding the "richness" of everyday experience. — darthbarracuda

...and also mildly interesting, occasionally eventful, repetitive in its satisfactions, familiar in its reassurances, etc, etc. Just because something is mild doesn't mean it can't be highly varied.

Been reading an interesting dissertation on this: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/13064981/Frick_gsas.harvard.inactive_0084L_11842.pdf?sequence=1

It's difficult to summarize as I don't fully grasp the entire argument, especially since much of it is geared towards rejecting other theories and pointing out their flaws, whether that be totalist consequentialism or some other conception.

However the basic gist is that the population Asymmetry exists because we have a standard that exists if we are to procreate. Abstaining from procreation results in no obligation, since no standard exists. But as soon as we contemplate whether or not we should have children, we are put into the mind-set of a standard: if we have children, then we must provide x for the child in order to meet this standard. If we cannot reach this standard then we have a clear-cut reason to not have a child. Thus, the author explicitly defends the thesis that population has little to no relevance here, and that our obligations are to people, not statistics or net-gross populations.

I'm not sure if this is entirely satisfactory, and I'm wondering how he escapes a comparison of populations. Perhaps this also falls under the standard - if we have to choose a population, then we must choose the larger population of happy people. But again I'm still working through the argument and will probably post a more detailed summary/response after I have digested the argument.

I was surprised that you accused apo of abstraction, since to me one very substantial difficulty is that 'the population Asymmetry' is a giant abstraction. At its heart lies the claim that some bloke living in relative comfort somewhere in the West is in a better position to know whether a couple in Mali or Malaysia or Madagascar should have a child than they are. Claims like this baffle me.

At its heart lies the claim that some bloke living in relative comfort somewhere in the West is in a better position to know whether a couple in Mali or Malaysia or Madagascar should have a child than they are. Claims like this baffle me. — mcdoodle

Why should it? I don't see how this changes anything. Does the addition of another person in the world make the world go better or worse or stay the same? You're implying that this debate is irrelevant to whether or not someone should have children and I think that is begging the question.