Surely no coherent ethical systems rely on thinking about impossible buttons that create impossible people, either for or against. We have something a bit like a button that creates people, and in fact living long enough to push it a bunch is our prime evolutionary goal. There's no telling if the people created will be happy, though, and this analog of a button very much affects the persons involved. A thought experiment that starts by skipping over the actual hard parts is on the same level as 'assume a can opener'.
This seems to assume that units of well-being can be created out of nothing indefinitely, but is that the case? Since humans are social animals I don't think solitary confinement in isolated caves will lead to happiness. But if we imagine them all in one large cave then eventually we will run into overcrowding, and adding more people will reduce each person's share of the cave's finite resources. Perhaps we should imagine that there is a finite limit to the units of well-being? Then it would be good to keep creating people until all the units of well-being are accounted for, but not so good once that threshold has been passed and creating more people requires removing units of well-being from the existing people. Is there a minimum level of well-being needed for survival? If so then I suppose there is another threshold where creating just one more person would reduce the entire population to below the minimum survival level. That sounds bad to me.
The person-affecting restriction is kind of like the doing-allowing distinction or any other deontological principle: if you try to make it really precise, it's gonna have absurd implications. Instead, I think the idea is that we're supposed to sort of "see it from afar" (to use Robin Hanson's phrase), and from that distance, it looks quite appealing.
I think the relevance of this argument depends on the nature of the universe. It might make sense in a finite universe where time is better described as a line rather than a tree. But the premise doesn't make sense under many other plausible descriptions of our universe.
Under the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics for example, the people this experiment would create are not mere possibilities; they are inevitable regardless of the actions of the decision maker. Even if the decision maker chooses not to push the buttons, there will inevitably be improbable branches of the universe where the buttons are pushed anyway by accident, or by freak gusts of wind generated by random quantum interactions of air molecules in the room, or by some other mechanism.
Whether new people are created in a probable branch of the universe or an improbable one, they don't really care - they experience being just as real either way. There is no reason to increase the probability of the branches of the universe containing new people, at least not unless that would benefit the already existing people in whatever branch the decision maker finds themself. I think something like the person affecting view is a good fit for a universe where things that can happen do happen.
“Button 2 would benefit Steve to some degree and create Brenda. This would be good! Button 3 would create Romero, benefit Brenda to some great degree, and get rid of the benefit to Quan. That would be worth pressing—the benefit to Brenda would dramatically outweigh the cost to Quan. Button 5 would have the effect of pressing all of the other buttons.”
What happened to Button 4? You mention it after but it’s not clear if that’s not he same as Button 5 or different.
I think this is an interesting thought experiment and I'd have to think a lot more about it, but my intuition is that it has some issues with temporality - you say the last button has the effect of "pushing all the other buttons," but those buttons *need* to be pressed in a particular order or their effects won't be worthwhile. If you press button 3 without having pressed button 2 first, then you'd be harming Quan but Brenda wouldn't exist to be benefited. So button 3's moral worth depends on having *first* pressed the other two. And that means pushing button 4 is only justified if you accept some sort of principle like: "If it's right to do A, and right to do B given A, and right to do C given B, then it's right to do A, B, and C at exactly the same time." And it seems like there could be some solid counterexamples to that.
Another way to understand button 4 would be that, instead of actually pushing all the other buttons, it just brings about whatever the end result of pushing those buttons in a row would be. Then your principle would have to be something like, "If it's right to do A, and right to do B given A, and right to do C given B, then it's right to do something that would bring about the state of affairs that obtain after having performed A, B, and C." But it's not obvious to me that's always true either. I'd have to think about it some more.
Surely no coherent ethical systems rely on thinking about impossible buttons that create impossible people, either for or against. We have something a bit like a button that creates people, and in fact living long enough to push it a bunch is our prime evolutionary goal. There's no telling if the people created will be happy, though, and this analog of a button very much affects the persons involved. A thought experiment that starts by skipping over the actual hard parts is on the same level as 'assume a can opener'.
This seems to assume that units of well-being can be created out of nothing indefinitely, but is that the case? Since humans are social animals I don't think solitary confinement in isolated caves will lead to happiness. But if we imagine them all in one large cave then eventually we will run into overcrowding, and adding more people will reduce each person's share of the cave's finite resources. Perhaps we should imagine that there is a finite limit to the units of well-being? Then it would be good to keep creating people until all the units of well-being are accounted for, but not so good once that threshold has been passed and creating more people requires removing units of well-being from the existing people. Is there a minimum level of well-being needed for survival? If so then I suppose there is another threshold where creating just one more person would reduce the entire population to below the minimum survival level. That sounds bad to me.
The person-affecting restriction is kind of like the doing-allowing distinction or any other deontological principle: if you try to make it really precise, it's gonna have absurd implications. Instead, I think the idea is that we're supposed to sort of "see it from afar" (to use Robin Hanson's phrase), and from that distance, it looks quite appealing.
I think the relevance of this argument depends on the nature of the universe. It might make sense in a finite universe where time is better described as a line rather than a tree. But the premise doesn't make sense under many other plausible descriptions of our universe.
Under the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics for example, the people this experiment would create are not mere possibilities; they are inevitable regardless of the actions of the decision maker. Even if the decision maker chooses not to push the buttons, there will inevitably be improbable branches of the universe where the buttons are pushed anyway by accident, or by freak gusts of wind generated by random quantum interactions of air molecules in the room, or by some other mechanism.
Whether new people are created in a probable branch of the universe or an improbable one, they don't really care - they experience being just as real either way. There is no reason to increase the probability of the branches of the universe containing new people, at least not unless that would benefit the already existing people in whatever branch the decision maker finds themself. I think something like the person affecting view is a good fit for a universe where things that can happen do happen.
“Button 2 would benefit Steve to some degree and create Brenda. This would be good! Button 3 would create Romero, benefit Brenda to some great degree, and get rid of the benefit to Quan. That would be worth pressing—the benefit to Brenda would dramatically outweigh the cost to Quan. Button 5 would have the effect of pressing all of the other buttons.”
What happened to Button 4? You mention it after but it’s not clear if that’s not he same as Button 5 or different.
I think this is an interesting thought experiment and I'd have to think a lot more about it, but my intuition is that it has some issues with temporality - you say the last button has the effect of "pushing all the other buttons," but those buttons *need* to be pressed in a particular order or their effects won't be worthwhile. If you press button 3 without having pressed button 2 first, then you'd be harming Quan but Brenda wouldn't exist to be benefited. So button 3's moral worth depends on having *first* pressed the other two. And that means pushing button 4 is only justified if you accept some sort of principle like: "If it's right to do A, and right to do B given A, and right to do C given B, then it's right to do A, B, and C at exactly the same time." And it seems like there could be some solid counterexamples to that.
Another way to understand button 4 would be that, instead of actually pushing all the other buttons, it just brings about whatever the end result of pushing those buttons in a row would be. Then your principle would have to be something like, "If it's right to do A, and right to do B given A, and right to do C given B, then it's right to do something that would bring about the state of affairs that obtain after having performed A, B, and C." But it's not obvious to me that's always true either. I'd have to think about it some more.