Better to have never existed?

Here we’re assuming the preference theory of welfare. It’s okay, it’s correct. You can just prefer things.

When we’re doing population ethics, animal ethics, etc., we often talk about whether a life is net positive, or worth living. For example, say I want to have a kid, and an oracle tells me that if I have a kid then they’ll have moderate eczema. It seems like I should still have a kid if I want, since eczema isn’t that bad and (assuming nothing else is awry) the kid will still be glad they existed. In contrast, if the oracle tells me my kid will be Fire Boy—a character of Amos Wollen’s who is a boy who’s constantly on fire and in extreme agony—I should probably just not have a kid, since if I do, it’d seem like it’d have been better for Fire Boy that he never existed in the first place.

Likewise, talk about lives that would be better to have never been is an important matter when it comes to wild animal suffering (which, by the way, is bad), e.g. in Adelstein’s discussions of nature and Mr. Glenn’s strong moral opposition to fish sex.

Now, if you’re expecting me to say “…and I’m going to prove Adelstein and Glenn wrong with the power of Kantian rationality!” then sorry to inform you, but they’re still probably right. At any rate, as my subtitle says, I still think talk about lives-not-worth-living is weird, which is not to say incorrect.

So, given that wellbeing is just preference satisfaction, and given that I am irrefutably correct to say so, what does it mean to say a life isn’t worth living, or it’s better for it to have never been? Here’s the part where the author would usually say “XYZ is the obvious proposal, but it turns out to be wrong.” But in this piece I find it more useful to first discuss a proposal that’s pretty wrong and probably not the first thing you’d come up with.

So, easy proposal: we measure your preference satisfaction with numbers a la some decision theory magic and say if your preference-satisfaction is at less than zero utils, then your life isn’t worth living. (Important point: “your life isn’t worth living” doesn’t mean “you should kill yourself.” It means “it would be better for you if you were never brought into existence, all else equal.” Maybe your current situation is worse than never having existence, but both are in turn worse than ending your life prematurely. Plus, there’s the fact that it’s your duty to care about things other than your own wellbeing.)

Immediate problem: it’s completely arbitrary where we set the zero point. Decision theory only knows about your preferences between different choices under uncertainty. Multiplying your utility function by two or subtracting 10 from it doesn’t change which choices are going to have a greater expected utility than which others, so (I would contend) all such measures are equally valid. It’s like measuring temperature; you can arbitrarily fix two reference points as you like, and that will determine what number you should assign to every other temperature. With utility, there’s no level of preference-satisfaction that is inherently negative.

But, you may respond, this just shows we need to appeal to information beyond that we get from decision theory. Surely we can imagine a life that sucks so much that we shouldn’t bring it into existence, and we can imagine a life so awesome that it’d be great to bring it into existence. So there will probably be some region in the middle where it’s a tough call, or where it seems neutral to bring the life into existence or not. So we can just set that intuitively-plausible-baseline at 0 utils. Anything an agent disprefers to that baseline is negative, and (all else equal) we shouldn’t bring such lives into existence.

However, if we adopt this strategy, then in fact “negative utility lives” will come apart from “lives so bad it’d be better not to exist.” Let us consider a man named Edward. Basically, Edward’s life is overall pleasant, so that it’d intuitively correspond to an overall-positive-utils life. However, Edward has a really strong preference that the Riemann Hypothesis be solved. He’s not an emotional man, so he doesn’t feel bad about it being unsolved, but he still wants it to be solved. Now, imagine the life you think corresponds to 0 utility. As it stands, Edward would trade his current pleasant life for the life you’re imagining in a heartbeat, if it meant the Riemann Hypothesis will be solved. Therefore, his current level of wellbeing is negative.

(It’s important to note that Edward wants it to be solved, and not simply because of the pleasure and excitement it would give him, or any other benefits; he’d trade his overall pleasant life for one that’s slightly negative-utils all things considered, if it meant the Riemann Hypothesis would be solved.)

Now, what should we do if we’re considering whether to bring Edward into existence, where he could live a pleasant life that he’d happily trade for the Riemann Hypothesis being solved? Let’s suppose there are no extrinsic considerations, e.g. that Edward might contribute to solving the problem; all else is equal, and we’re just deciding whether to bring someone into existence who has the level of welfare Edward has. I contend that the fact that Edward is worse off than if he had a neutral existence does not speak even a little bit against bringing him into existence. Were the Riemann Hypothesis to be solved, then certainly we’d want Edward to exist, or at least it wouldn’t be bad to have him exist. But what if the Riemann Hypothesis will never be solved, and our decision won’t affect that matter either way? It’s not like Edward will be sitting around saying “Woe is me, having a negative utility function.” He will say, “It sucks that the Riemann Hypothesis will remain unsolved; but that would suck just as much if I never existed. What I prefer is for the Riemann Hypothesis to be solved; I do not care about me having a satisfied preference; if I could get a brain surgery that would make me not care about the Riemann Hypothesis, I would get it, if it means the problem would be solved. And however much I like existing, I like it equally as much as if the Riemann Hypothesis were to be solved.”

Indeed, all the same applies even if Edward would choose a life of extreme agony if it meant the Riemann Hypothesis would be solved. From the fact that Edward is worse off than if he were in extreme agony for his whole life, it does not follow that bringing him into existence is as bad as we’d intuitively think bringing Fire Boy into existence would be.

There’s an idea that a person existing with such-and-such a level of wellbeing adds a corresponding amount to the world’s axiology, i.e. the measure of how good the world is. Add a net-flourishing person, and the goodness in the world goes up by a corresponding amount; add a net-unflourishing person, and the world gets a bit worse. You needn’t be a consequentialist to think this; you might just think there’s a fact about how good the world is, and that axiological considerations give pro tanto reasons for action, while a consequentialist would say they give decisive reasons. However, I’m skeptical of this picture entirely. Even though Edward may be worse off than someone with an intuitively-net-negative life, it doesn’t follow that Edward existing makes the world even a little bit more dispreferable.

There’s an obvious and simple reason why, if you know the preference-satisfaction theory of welfare is true, you shouldn’t buy that 0 utils is the cutoff for whether you should bring someone into existence. Edward has (we suppose, for the sake of evaluating the zero-utils proposal) negative welfare; but it doesn’t follow that he prefers a world like the one we have, except where he doesn’t exist. That world might just be even more negative-utility for Edward.

So that brings us to the more natural proposal for when a life contributes negatively to the world’s axiology, i.e. for when it is better to have never been born. The natural proposal is that it’s better to never have been born when an agent, all things considered, would prefer to never have been born. Realistically, Fire Boy is in so much pain he’d rather just not exist; in contrast, nonexistence wouldn’t get Edward what he wants the most. Thus, we don’t want to bring Fire Boy into existence, but we’re okay with bringing Edward into existence. Makes sense.

However, sadly, “a life that the agent disprefers to nonexistence” still comes apart from “a life that is bad to create, that contributes negatively to the world’s axiology.”

Consider the following example. Let’s say we have a man named Melvin whose life seems pretty wonderful; he’s rich, handsome, does exciting stuff all the time, experiences a lot of pleasure and little pain, etc. In addition, though, he’s single, and he’d give up his wealth and adventures if he could just have a loving wife. But make no mistake; Melvin doesn’t feel horrifically lonely, nor does his bachelorhood cause him anguish on a day to day basis. He’s very well-off and has lots of fun, he just has an even stronger preference for having a wife. In other words, what I say is meant to convey not that Melvin doesn’t value his riches very much, but rather, that he just really wants a wife. This case, I hope, seems perfectly realistic, and I hope it’s clear that, if the phrase “net positive life” means anything, Melvin has one of those. A universe full of Melvins would not be a terrible thing.

Now, I need you to be very careful, and I want you to change just one detail of our example with Melvin. Let us call this new version Melvin₂. Instead of strongly desiring a loving wife, Melvin₂ instead—and please, goodness, focus all your mental energy on holding everything else constant—Melvin₂ instead has a strong preference for not existing. (If you’re asking “then why is Melvin₂ still here,” I don’t know, maybe he’s not able to change that.) It’s not important why this is; it’s just a weird quirk of his psychology that he has a strong, brute, non-instrumental preference for not existing. Again, in every visible way, he enjoys his wealth and adventures as much as you’d expect; he just wants to not exist even more. If the preference theory of welfare is true, which it is, then yes, Melvin₂ is better off not existing; but a world full of Melvin₂s would not be a terrible thing, like how a world full of Fire Boys would be. If axiology is a thing, then Melvin₂ does not contribute negatively to his world’s.

My contention, then, is twofold: (i) the closest thing there is to “a net-negative life” is a life to which the agent prefers non-existence, and (ii) whether a life is net-negative in this sense does not tell us whether it’s pro tanto wrong to bring such a life into existence, any more than it’s pro tanto wrong to bring someone who would have an unsatisfied preference for a wife into existence, assuming they’re otherwise happy.

But isn’t the relevant analogue, in the case of someone who wants a wife, whether it would be a pro tanto wrong to make them not have a wife? (And surely that would be a pro tanto wrong.) No: for causing Melvin₂ to exist does not merely cause him to have an unsatisfied preference for not existing, but in addition, it’s what causes him to have any preferences at all, including the ones that are satisfied. So the relevant analogue is whether it is a pro tanto wrong to cause, for the original Melvin, the whole state of affairs including many of his preferences being satisfied, albeit not maximally. And this, as such, is not a pro tanto wrong.

EDIT (SUPER IMPORTANT): Thanks to a productive conversation with Harry Moss, whom you should subscribe to, I want to correct some mistakes I made in the above two paragraphs. I completely retract my statement that someone preferring not existing is not a pro tanto consideration against bringing them into existence. I think the cases of Fire Boy and Melvin₂ are analogous, assuming the latter’s preference to not exist is great enough. And it is clear that the intuition that bringing Melvin₂ into existence is alright would be the erroneous one, since he superficially seems to be doing fine by ordinary human standards. I maintain that considering Melvin₂ on the model of contributing negatively to the world’s axiology is misleading, assuming you wouldn’t say the same for the original Melvin. Phrasing my conclusion in the way I did was utterly careless, and I apologize for that.

The above shouldn’t be too surprising a conclusion. According to preference utilitarianism, all preferences are on a par; nothing can adjudicate between whether to give you pleasure vs. knowledge except for the fact of which of these you value more. So no wonder there’s nothing qualitatively special about your preference to exist or not.