The Core Confusion Behind The Asymmetry

It's better if good things are happening than if they aren't!

There’s lots of confusion about the procreation asymmetry. For example, how does one spell asymmetry? Why are there two m’s? Is this part of some elite plot? If so, whose plot is it, and why are they doing it? The Biden administration won’t answer this question. And that’s the point. They want you confused and docile.

The procreation asymmetry claims that you have no reason to create happy people but some reason to make existing people happy. It’s often claimed that the procreation asymmetry is intuitive. I do not know why anyone says this! It’s very plausible that having kids is in part good because it’s good for the kid. As Theron Pummer says (tragically he’s joined the dark side and now thinks the procreation asymmetry is right, but he said this when he was on the side of truth and justice):

…suppose I could push a button that would create billions of happy people living on several large and lush Eden-like planets. These people would in turn produce further generations of happy people, who would do likewise, and so on for the foreseeable future. Pushing the button would cost me nothing and do no harm or wrong. Would it be wrong of me not to push the button, in this case? Yes, I believe it would.

There’s one core argument for the asymmetry. It is roughly the following:

1. For something to be good it must benefit someone.

2. For something to benefit someone, they must be better off because of it than they would otherwise have been.

3. If a person would not have existed absent being created, then creating them does not make them better off than they would have otherwise been.

So creating someone is not good, all else equal.

But the problem is that 2 is clearly false. By definition, for a person to be better off than they would have otherwise been, they have to be in both scenarios. This premise is thus quite straightforwardly question-begging; it amounts to little more than a bare assertion that existence can’t benefit someone relative to non-existence. So there’s literally nothing going in support of this premise. In contrast, various parallel arguments can utterly eliminate the force of this argument. To see this, consider the following parallels:

1. For something to be good it must benefit someone.

2. For something to benefit someone, they must be better off because of it than they would otherwise have been.

3. If a person would not have existed absent having been revived from the dead, then reviving them does not make them better off than they would have otherwise been.

4. If a person is revived from the dead then they would not have existed absent being revived from the dead.

So reviving someone from the dead is not good, all else equal.

You might reject 4 by being an eternalist and saying that the dead exist, just in the past. But surely the reason why it’s good to bring people back from the dead can’t hinge entirely on eternalism being true. If you discovered that presentism was true, bringing someone back from the dead wouldn’t cease to be worthwhile.

Here’s a second parallel argument:

1. For something to be good it must benefit someone at some time.

2. For something to benefit someone at some time, they must be better off because of it than they would otherwise have been.

3. If a person’s life is saved then there is no time during which this action makes them better off because they wouldn’t have otherwise continued to exist during those times.

So saving someone’s life is not good, all else equal.

Note here that we’re assuming that saving their life would result in them living many more happy years but would have no effect on anything else. In such a case, contra the Epicureans, it seems that saving their life is, in fact, quite valuable. It’s good for them even though they wouldn’t otherwise have existed.

Here’s a third parallel argument:

1. For something to be bad it must harm someone.

2. For something to harm someone, they must be worse off because of it than they would otherwise have been.

3. If a person would not have existed absent being created, then creating them does not make them better off than they would have otherwise been no matter how miserable they are,

So creating someone is not bad, no matter how miserable they are, all else equal.

This implies that creating a person whose life is filled with excruciating agony wouldn’t be immoral. But this is clearly wrong. So there must be something wrong with the logic.

Note that we don’t have to abandon the spirit of the principle to avoid all these results. We can ditch 2 and replace it with the following principle:

For something to benefit someone, it must be that there is more that goes well for them than there would have otherwise been.

This maintains the spirit of the principle but ditches the requirement that the person exists in both cases. But more is going well when a person is created and lives a happy life—now some things are going well for them when there would have otherwise been nothing going well or poorly for them.

And this is a more plausible version of the principle. When you think about the happy moments of your life, isn’t it good for you that you exist to experience those moments. That you’re around to fall in love, appreciate the beauty of nature, spend time with those you care about, write cool blog articles, and more. There might be tricky issues with counterfactual comparisons surrounding nonexistence, but we should interpret the unclear in the light of the clear. What is clear is that it’s valuable that we’re around to have all of these good experiences.

Note that each of the three parody arguments have exactly as much force as the original. Yet the parodies are all wrong, thus so too must the original be wrong. More evidence for this comes from the many absurd consequence of accepting the asymmetry that I’ve provided elsewhere.