{"items": [{"author": "Kiran", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/notes/jeff-kaufman/utilitarianism-and-overpopulation/493202506212/?comment_id=493297216212", "anchor": "fb-493297216212", "service": "fb", "text": "It seems you would have to raise your children to be very generous *and* to be successful enough at wealth creation to have as much money to donate as you'll spend raising them, plus a dollar.
Of course, if your child is the straw that triggers ocean acidification and a hydrogen sulfide extinction event, you might have a different problem.", "timestamp": "1297070721"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/notes/jeff-kaufman/utilitarianism-and-overpopulation/493202506212/?comment_id=493345241212", "anchor": "fb-493345241212", "service": "fb", "text": "Imagine you spend $200K to raise a child. Pretty standard number. For them to then donate $200K over the course of their lives doesn't require them to be unreasonably generous or successful. I'm nearly a quarter of the way there, after working professionally for two years. I'd be much more worried about whether I could raise a child to be that generous than whether I could raise them to make that much money.
You do need to account for the value of donating now, vs in the future, but I don't have a good answer for that.", "timestamp": "1297082338"}, {"author": "Victor", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/notes/jeff-kaufman/utilitarianism-and-overpopulation/493202506212/?comment_id=493352841212", "anchor": "fb-493352841212", "service": "fb", "text": "Raising children is far less predictable than you seem to think. An additional complication is the age distribution of the population. \"Aging\" societies such as Japan face problems related to not having enough young, healthy people. This could occur here as well although there are several confounding factors, including immigration.
As is often said.\"Predictions are hard-especially about the future.\".", "timestamp": "1297084236"}, {"author": "Kiran", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/notes/jeff-kaufman/utilitarianism-and-overpopulation/493202506212/?comment_id=493359751212", "anchor": "fb-493359751212", "service": "fb", "text": "Ah, Victor makes a good point. Your children could, instead of being generous, pay back-breaking taxes to support the state-provided needs of the non-working elderly.
And, I don't think Jeff thinks raising children is predictable; I'd expect he thinks exactly the opposite.", "timestamp": "1297085525"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/notes/jeff-kaufman/utilitarianism-and-overpopulation/493202506212/?comment_id=493385806212", "anchor": "fb-493385806212", "service": "fb", "text": "@Victor: children don't have to be predictable for this to work. It's fine to have things in terms of probabilities. A kid who is only 20% likely to give away 1M \"replaces themself\" just as much as one who is 100% likely to give away $200K. Because it's so hard to predict how much someone would earn and how much they would give away, when I say that this could be \"negated if you thought you could raise your children to be very generous\" I don't think it's certain at all.", "timestamp": "1297090213"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/notes/jeff-kaufman/utilitarianism-and-overpopulation/493202506212/?comment_id=493386356212", "anchor": "fb-493386356212", "service": "fb", "text": "@Victor: I think immigration is key. There are lots of people who would like to live and work in the united states as citizens. Unlike japan, we have a relatively healthy culture of accepting and assimilating immigrants.", "timestamp": "1297090309"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/notes/jeff-kaufman/utilitarianism-and-overpopulation/493202506212/?comment_id=10150563734451213", "anchor": "fb-10150563734451213", "service": "fb", "text": "Average utilitarianism can be assessed as an average of moments, or of lives. With the latter, it does not value the world more highly with the death of people living happy but below-average lives (since this would lower the goodness in the average life), but would counsel against the creation of more below-average lives. Here's a post from Richard Chappell on the subject: http://www.philosophyetc.net/.../killing-and-average...
A more serious concern is the Sadistic Conclusion: if the average is negative, then creating less-negative lives can be good for the average.", "timestamp": "1331077405"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/notes/jeff-kaufman/utilitarianism-and-overpopulation/493202506212/?comment_id=10150563948791213", "anchor": "fb-10150563948791213", "service": "fb", "text": "@Carl: reading Chappell's post I see the moments/lives distinction, but moments makes more sense to me [1]. A life that is happy and long seems better than one that is happy and short but with lifewise averaging this disappears.
I'm also not sure that a life is a meaningful concept to average over. In a future with whole brain emulation a life can fork; what happens to our average then?
[1] But totaling also makes more sense to me than averaging (lots of happy people seems better than a few slightly happier ones), in which case the moments/lives distinction goes away.", "timestamp": "1331088212"}]}