Talk:Mere addition paradox

message: I think the solution to the paradox is that the transition from A to A+ is practically impossible. Since the world has limited resources, we cannot just add moderately happy people without making the old group less happy. With more effective farming and such, there is room for more people, and that is just what happened through history. If the earth was infinitely big, then I would suggest increasing the population. 
I know this is a thought example. But in unrealistic though example, we cannot use out ethical intuition. It seems like a "Repugnant Conclusion", but that's because out sense of ethics is made for real situation. --Apoc2400 10:37, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Apoc2400, this is indeed the best explanation I've seen on this talk page. I had been wondering whether the idea was just distorted in our article, but I now see that the thought example is irreparably unrealistic because you can't treat people as if there were just numbers: You can't simply add - or subtract! - them without massively affecting both the happiness of many people and without creating dramatic ethical side effects. I thought that, at least since WW2, ethicists had learned that lesson. — Sebastian 02:52, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  That is certainly homing in on the soloution as it mentions resources (which haven't been handled correctly in the paradox), but I came here to post the definitive resolution. There's clearly an optimum population size for maximum happiness given a specific amount of resources. I'm going to name the part of A+ that isn't A as A' in order to make it easier to refer to it and to its resources. Population A may have optimal size for its resources if we exclude the resources available to A', but if A has access to those resources too, then it is not optimal and it needs to grow its population to become optimal. When we look at A+, we see an unfair distribution of resources, and if we fixed that, A+ might end up looking exactly like B-. (This would happen because the happiness of the population falls to zero long before the resources per person approach zero - it is not a linear relationship. If you drag people out of poverty by giving them a modest increase in resources, their happiness shoots up.) We can see now that A with all the resources of A+ (but without the population A') is inferior to A+ in terms of happiness (while A with only the resources of A and none of the resources of A' is superior to A+ per unit of resources), and we can also see that A+ is inferior to an adjusted A+ with a redistribution of resources to even them out, and we can see that A+ is inferior to B- and B if it lacks that even distribution of resources, or it may be on a level with B- and B if it has redistributed resources to even them out. B is superior to A if A has access to the resources of A' but with none of the population A', but A is still superior to B if it doesn't have access to those extra resources of A' when you compare A and B per unit of available resources (which B has a lot more of). The "paradox" was thus based on a basic fundamental error in failing to examine the allocations of resources. Djvyd (talk) 05:04, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

text: If this needs a link to qualify for a mention in the proper Wikipedia article, the argument is set out in an article written by me at Lesswrong - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pev6HYvngkLCKW6TC/mere-addition-paradox-resolved . Djvyd (talk) 21:25, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  A solution, I think 

message: The Repugnant Conclusion includes the loaded phrase 'barely worth living'. What does this mean?
Suppose we add a dotted horizontal line to the original diagram, at a height somewhere lower than that of the shortest column, and label this 'Worth Living'. Then columns whose height's are above this line consist of people whose lives are worth living.
This is assumed, but not explicitly, stated by the original 'paradox'.
Now presumably The Repugnant Conclusion describes a situation represented by a column as wide as possible, whose height is just over this dotted line. So everyone in this population has a life that is worth living. Therefore we accept the so-called Repugnant conclusion, and the paradox is gone. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Deglog (talk • contribs).
:Or, more precisely, the repugnant conclusion follows from the repugnant axiom that there are lives which are happy but not worth living. 217.125.231.108 (talk) 16:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Barely Worth Living - a clarification and resolution?

message: There is John Rawl's A Theory of Justice, where he considers a minimax way of choosing the world where it has the best worst case scenario. 
In addition, Average vs. Total Utility should be discussed. --70.111.218.254 14:55, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the key is the average utility vs total utility. The mere addition phrase for some reason made me think of families. World A could be some rich bachelor. World A+ could the rich bachelor getting married and this relationship with its pros and cons nets out to zero but brings great happiness to his wife (like the Pretty Woman movie or something). World B is them having children and becoming slightly less happy but bringing much happiness and existence to the children. The repugnant conclusion becomes a "large family". Not a perfect match of course. 64.42.233.61 17:10, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other opinions 

message: You can't take an absurdity, arrive at an absurdity and claim to have proven anything.  If you accept the initial scenario of a population of individuals of IDENTICAL happiness then whatever absurdity results is your own fault.  
A population of individuals of the exact same instantaneous happiness, is just as absurd as a population of particles with the exact same quantum states.
If happiness is taken to be the ONLY important characteristic of life, and the origin of all moral value, then a persons specific level of happiness defines them completely.  
At best this merely shows that in the most extreme of situations (populations of infinite number, of infinitessimal happiness, or when comparing happiness levels of virtually identical quantities) normal rules of addition no longer can be relied on as valid APPROXIMATIONS. It doesn't show a defect in utilitarianism applied to real moral problems, any more than the discovery that the universe doesn't follow euclydean geometry has deterred people from successfully treating parallel lines as never meeting for real problems.  Moral philosophies do not need to concern themselves with morally absurd hypotheticals.
This appeal to repugnancy also fails on another basis. It assumes that you dont already find population A to be repugnant, but it is. If I was identical to everyone else, no matter how large or small the population was, I would find my life barely worth living anyway (and so would they, since they are the same as me).. so consequently the only difference between A and Z is the population count itself, any difference in happiness is an illusion in the mind of the external observer. All these populations are repugnant.
TheDarknessVisible 20:11, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really. The total uniformity of each group is not essential to the argument. "...[assume] there is neither social nor natural inequality; no one is worse off than anyone else. This would never in fact be true. But it cannot distort our reasoning, on the questions I shall ask, if we imagine that it would be true..." (page 385 in my edition) --74.100.225.24 01:37, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Not repugnant, but absurd

message: The paradox is fun at first glance. The reason it is not a paradox lies in a misconception of Human happiness. Happiness is not an absolute and the human mind does not have an agreed upon scale nor do humans have the ability to measure happiness outside of their own. By way of example consider the case of a person living with a physical or mental deviation from the norm. Nearly every normally configured person would with extreme certitude claim that the un-norm has sub-norm happiness but this conclusion is entirely unfounded. There is extensive data demonstrating that a human can be extremely happy (or sad) within the scales they individually establish based on their own experiences and there can be no substitute nor projection of valuation of happiness beyond the individual's. The point here being that it is virtually impossible to assign relative levels of happiness across individuals as there is no way to agree upon an absolute scale (how do you compare a deaf individuals appreciation of a kaleidoscope to a blind individual's appreciation of techno-trance music? Can it not be the case that a sighted person enjoys music and other non-vision senses less such that the blind person en total breaks even for happiness?
Ram A M 22:07, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Isn't happiness a tricky word to use when discussing these issues? I'm prone to think of welfare or well-being, conditions that are obviously dependent on external factors, contrary to many conceptions of happiness, such as the Buddhist one. (One could say running water and electricity aren't conditions of happiness, but I don't see how one could say they aren't conditions for some level of well-being.) -- Kripkenstein (talk) 03:20, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Misunderstanding happiness

message: Why the non-existence (zero happiness) of the missing population of A doesn't count in the average happiness ? (A country of 1 man is no way better than a country of 1 000 000) Frigo (talk) 17:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Because they don't exist. If you are going to count non-existent people, how many of them are there? How would you know when to stop counting? Richard001 (talk) 06:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

text: What if the newcomers are, say, on a different planet, so that the old-times aren't even aware of them? Would you still agree that it's better for the newcomers not to be born? That's what A+ versus A is trying to get across. --192.75.48.150 (talk) 20:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems with the average happiness of A 

message: Does anyone have any ideas how the above article should be differentiated from this one? We obviously don't want to have too much repetition. I suppose that one could provide a quick summary of this one, but they seem to be basically the same subject. This is just an article about the dilemma of the utilitarian when it comes to average or total. What else is there to talk about besides the dilemma? Richard001 (talk) 07:03, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This paradox seems to be more general, and applies to anyone who thinks that situations such as A, A+ and B can be meaningfully compared. As a side note, that other article implies that it is not a problem for average utilitarians, when clearly it is: they are forced to conclude that A+ is worse than A, when it is a mere addition and so cannot be. --192.75.48.150 (talk) 19:51, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Relationship between this article and [[average and total utilitarianism]]

message: What makes the Mere Addition Paradox hard to accept is that creating more beings (who are born happy) doesn't seem to compensate for decreases in happiness in already existing beings even though it increases the total happiness in the world. But this problem can be circumvented by not redistributing any happiness from already existing beings to new beings until the new beings already have existed for a while. Suppose two very happy parents A and B bring a just barely happy child C to the world, becoming a little bit happier themselves in the process. One year later, A and B make C a lot happier at the cost of some of their own happiness, like this:
Year 1:
A:s happiness is 100.
B:s happiness is 100.
C does not yet exist.
Year 2:
A:s happiness is 105.
B:s happiness is 105.
C starts to exist, with the initial happiness 5.
Year 3:
A:s happiness is 75.
B:s happiness is 75.
C:s happiness is 75.
First consider the change from year 1 to year 2. It is clearly an improvement of the world, according to hedonistic utilitarianism as well as according to common sense ethics. The sum of happiness in the world increases, no suffering is added, and a new human being starts to exist with some happiness and no suffering. Now consider the change from year 2 to year 3. The parents, A and B, voluntarily "give to their child some of their happiness", which is generally considered a good (or at least not bad) thing to do. As the happiness gain of C is bigger than the happiness sacrifices of A and B together, the total happiness in the world increases again. Thus, just like the change from year 1 to year 2, the change from year 2 to year 3 is an improvement of the world, or at least not worse than no change at all, according to hedonistic utilitarianism as well as according to common sense ethics. Since both the change from year 1 to year 2 and the change from year 2 to year 3 are at least as good as no change at all, the change from year 1 to year 3 too must be at least as good as no change at all. This kind of redistribution can be repeated indefinitely, for each new person created - D, E, F, G etc. - until everybody has just barely above zero happiness. Nowhere would there be a change from one year to another where common sense ethics could plausibly argue for a halt. This shows that the Mere Addition Paradox is no paradox and should be accepted, and that there is nothing repugnant about the Repugnant Conclusion.
(One objection from common sense ethics might be that this proof does not show that happiness redistribution that increases the total happiness in the world is a good thing when it involves sacrificing someone's happiness against his/her will. But whether it is wrong to sacrifice someone's happiness against his/her will is a separate issue and not what the Mere Addition Paradox is designed to show.)
I don't know who came up with the basic idea underlying this this argument, but Torbjörn Tännsjö has quoted an earlier version of it in at least one of his books. The version presented here is my version of it.  Schtrarscht (talk) 10:21, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why the "Mere Addition Paradox" is no paradox, and why the "Repugnant Conclusion" should be accepted 

message: 1) The fact that "repugnant conclusion" redirects here is misleading.  The repugnant conclusion is not the same as MAP, and is indeed more general than MAP.  The repugnant conclusion should be discussed first, as it is in Reasons and Persons (for good reasons).   (And probably head the name of the article as well).  
2) The article fails to distinguish MAP and the repugnant paradox and indeed, confuses the two.  
3) The first sentence in the article is wrong in two major ways.  Parfit expressly notes that the population Z is "deeply" impossible, and so a utopian society A would never "lead" to a Z population!  Secondly, the phrase "by arguing that utilitarianism leads to an apparent overpopulated dystopian world" while technically true, entirely misses the other half of the paradox.  Actually, I can't find a single place in this article that explicitly defines what MAP actually IS.  
If no one has any arguments with the above, I will do a major overhaul of this article in the next few days.  Traversc (talk) 05:51, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is badly in need of a rewrite 

message: In english, and I presume other languages, we say and use things that are rediculous - school children have arguments about what happens when the irresistable force meets the immovable object.
This seems a more fancy version of that, sort of 4/0 = color of the smell of a rose; you can write down the words, and if you are clever they make sense, but it is just silly  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.236.121.54 (talk) 17:21, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: problem of language

message: Can we add a redirection sign to this page, please?  This so-called paradox is much more commonly referred to as the 'Repugnant Conclusion'.  Can someone arrange it that, when someone types in that search term, it automatically redirects to this page? Felixthehamster (talk) 12:02, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This seems to have been in place since 2007 - Repugnant conclusion.  Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:27, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Request for redirect

message: I just read the article and found the description of the paradox confusing. I came to this talk page to voice my concern, and also to offer an easy clarification. What I saw here astonished me. A lot of wikipedians have realized the said (mathematical) confusion. Still, these observations did not lead to a better article. How come?!
Dear emotionally attached editors, let me offer you a lucid explanation. I leave the decision to you whether to lift it into the article or not.
:The paradox
:Consider the four populations depicted in the following diagram: A, A+, B- and B. Each bar, within a population, represents a distinct group of people, whose size is represented by the bar's width and whose average happiness is represented by the bar's height. A and B are the two simple populations that we shall compare in the end. A+ and B- are complex populations (of two groups each) which will showcase the difficulties in the comparison. (Although it is unrealistic, and also irrelevant to the argument, we can assume that each group is homogeneous in their happiness.)
:How do these four populations compare in value? Let's start by making comparisons between pairs of populations. We will have to differentiate whether we compare their total (T) or their average (mean, M) happiness.
:First, A and A+ have an indentical group, and also the additional group in A+ has positive happiness. We could thus say that the happiness of A+ is no less than that of A — assuming that the additional people do not interfere with the happiness of the rest. This corresponds with a growth in total happiness, TA < TA+. (But note that the average happiness decreases, MA > MA+.)
:Second, the difference between A+ and B- is that happiness is "reallocated" between the groups (cf. the people are regrouped, if groups can be heterogeneous). Also, for the purposes of the argument, lets make everyone in B- slightly more happy. Thus both the total and the average happiness of B- will be greater than that of A+: TA+ < TB- and MA+ < MB-.
:Finally, B- and B are equivalent in their composition. The two groups of the former are merged in the latter.
:Put together, we can say that B is better than A (as in their total happiness, TA < TB). But this leads to the repugnant conclusion that an enormously populous society with a very low (but positive) average happiness can be even better.
:Or we can say that A is better than B (measuring their average happiness, MA > MB). But then we reject that a mere addition of happy people (but who have below average happiness) can increase the happiness of a society.
:Thus it is ambiguous (some say paradoxical) to compare the happiness of societies.
In my opinion this is a fairer treatment of this so called paradox. Denounce (talk) 02:01, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggested clarification

message: At least three which touch on these issues.  Wow, they seem to run pretty deep.  Might be a good addition for external references?  FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 17:24, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some essays by Stuart Rachels. 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: It seems like the existence of a repugnant conclusion only arises if one defines happiness as a quantity that scales linearly, such that more is always better. 
If we instead define happiness as an equilibrium, so that negative scores represent misery, positive scores represent excess or “decadence”, and 0 represents lagom (a Scandinavian term meaning “just the right amount”, viewed as the ideal), the paradox disappears. In an ideal world, _everyone_ would have a score of 0, and it would make _no_ difference how many people there are because the mean and standard deviation would be the same (0 in both cases), regardless of population size. Non-ideal worlds would either have a larger standard deviation, or would have a mean score different from 0.
Parfit, like most utilitarians, seems to approach the question from an American/consumerist perspective that sees happiness as akin to money (so that “more is always better”). This attitude is _far_ from universal, and many other cultures (not just Scandinavians) would define happiness more like the example I just gave. 2604:2D80:6984:3800:0:0:0:8734 (talk) 16:55, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: If you measure happiness differently, the paradox disappears