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Thought Experiment 52: More or Less

4/25/2016

4 Comments

 
Picture
Ooh, I was hoping we'd get to this. A few weeks ago when I dealt with thought experiment 46, I mentioned that it didn't look like we were going to cover Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion, but here it is! There is an error in the index of The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, so it looked like we were done with Parfit, but apparently not. Anyway, let's read the experiment and see what I'm talking about.

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     Carol had decided to use a large slice of her substantial wealth to improve life in an impoverished village in southern Tanzania. However, since she had reservations about birth-control programmes, the development agency which she was working with had to come up with two possible plans.
     The first would involve no birth-control element. This would probably see the population of the village rise from 100 to 150 and the quality of life index, which measures subjective as well as objective factors, rise modestly from an average of 2.4 to 3.2.
     The second plan did include a non-coercive birth-control programme. This would see the population remain stable at 100, but the average quality of life would rise to 4.0.
     Given that only those with a quality of life ranked as 1.0 or lower consider their lives not to be worth living at all, the first plan would lead to there being more worthwhile lives than the second, whereas the second would result in fewer lives, but ones which were even more fulfilled. Which plan would make the best use of Carol's money?

Source: Part four of Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit, 1984.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 154.

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After showing the mathematical error in last week's thought experiment, you might be tempted to try the same method here to arrive at a conclusion, but what do you think? Is that the right way to consider this issue? I'll be back on Friday with an answer that shows my work.

4 Comments
Stephen Willey
4/25/2016 06:12:50 pm

The catch here is that the extra people in the first plan DO NOT EXIST in the population she wants tohelp. Creating more people who need help is not the best use of funds. The second offering fixes conditions for those who need the fix.

Reply
@EdGibney link
4/26/2016 08:05:31 am

Good comment! Pulling Parfit's concepts of "future persons" into this is certainly one way to look at the problem. I don't think it's the only catch though as I think all of this needs to be placed in a wider context (of evolutionary philosophy...), which I'll try to show on Friday.

Reply
John A. Johnson link
4/26/2016 03:12:55 pm

A number of questions, both statistical and conceptual, need to be settled before I could respond to this thought experiment. On the numbers side, who is to say that the number of individuals at level 1 is of overriding importance? If we do grant this, the means certainly do not reveal the total number of 1s. Means of 3.2 and 4.0 can be achieved with varying numbers of 1s. Even if we did know the number of 1s in each scenario, which is more important, the sheer number or the percentage of 1s? Why? A similar question can be asked if one computes "total happiness" as the mean x the number of people, 3.2 x 150 = 480 > 4.0 x 100 = 400. Is 480 units of happiness really better than 400 units of happiness? Or is the average level of 4.0 better than 3.2? Next, why assume that happiness/quality of life/worthwhileness of life is the deciding factor of what is good, better, best? There are alternatives, including sheer increase in life. I happen to think that quality of life is important, but Carol seems to be a fan of simple increase in the number of people since she is not keen on birth control. Finally, it is Carol's money, but is the question what is best from her point of view or some larger point of view?

Reply
@EdGibney link
4/26/2016 07:48:11 pm

Great points, John. I honestly wasn't even thinking about the mathematical spread of the data, but that would definitely enter into the consideration if you think (like a utilitarian) that personal or collective happiness/well-being is the paramount concern and therefore the best way to judge this. Of course, I don't think that's the fundamental judge of right and wrong though so I'll have a different criterion I'll be concerned with...

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