It would seem that if the earth were teeming with many billions of people, making everyone’s life worse, that would be bad.
But what if the total sum of human happiness would be higher with many billions of people whose lives were barely worth living—higher, that is, than with a smaller population of well-off people?
Wouldn’t the first situation be, in some moral sense, better? Parfit calls this the Repugnant Conclusion. It seems absurd, but, at least for a consequentialist, its logic is difficult to counter.
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