AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
Dear forum,
I was wondering if the repugnant conclusion could be responded by an argument of the following form:
Considering planet earth and a given happiness distribution of its citizens with total happiness h, there is simply not enough space or resources or whatsoever to let an arbitrary large number of people n live with an average amount of happiness epsilon, such that n * epsilon > h. At even larger scales, the observable universe is finite and thus for the same reason as above n does not need to exist.
What do you think of such an argument?
I am not sure, whether the nature of the repugnant conclusion is really affected by such an argument. Can you help me to understand?
The repugnant conclusion is presented as an objection to certain views in population axiology. The claim is that a possible world containing sufficiently many morally relevant beings just above neutrality is intrinsically better than a possible world with arbitrarily many beings arbitrarily happy. The claim is not that these worlds could become actual, so empirical considerations of the sort you describe aren't relevant for assessing the force of the objection.
Put differently, theories like total utilitarianism imply that the "repugnant" world would be better if it existed, and the objection is that this implication is implausible. The implausibility would remain even if it was shown that the "repugnant" world cannot exist.
Thank you very much, you put it words, what I could not. Your answer gave me not only the assurance that my doubts were justified, but also some confidence to ask more questions of that kind.Thank you.
Related - The Upper Limit of Value
And thank you as well for the short, but helpful answer. The relevance of the thought of mine for philosophy gives also confidence to that thinking.
Btw we have a some friends in common of which I am aware: EdoArad -> (Shay ben moshe) -> Amit -> Arne
^^
Cool! Through data science I guess?
Yup, through effectivethesis precisely