If anyone’s interested in seeing a defence of the full bulletbiting totalist view, here is one such defence. https://benthams.substack.com/p/utilitarianism-wins-outright-part-67f
How does the iteration argument work? Suppose I'm OK with replacing population-1 with (vastly better-off) population-99, but not with replacing population-1 with population-2 (or likewise for any other consecutively number pairs). Are you assuming that replacing p1 directly with p99 is morally equivalent to replacing p1 with p2, then p2 with p3, then ... then p98 with p99? Notice that the latter process involves murdering like a hundred times as many people. I think that makes it a lot worse!
The iteration argument just says that constant replacement would be bad when it seems good. If everyone after a bunch of painless replacement is living lives that are so good that every moment is as good as horrific torture is bad, the idea that the iterated replacement is bad seems implausible -- but the intuition is in the mind of the beholder.
If anyone’s interested in seeing a defence of the full bulletbiting totalist view, here is one such defence. https://benthams.substack.com/p/utilitarianism-wins-outright-part-67f
How does the iteration argument work? Suppose I'm OK with replacing population-1 with (vastly better-off) population-99, but not with replacing population-1 with population-2 (or likewise for any other consecutively number pairs). Are you assuming that replacing p1 directly with p99 is morally equivalent to replacing p1 with p2, then p2 with p3, then ... then p98 with p99? Notice that the latter process involves murdering like a hundred times as many people. I think that makes it a lot worse!
The iteration argument just says that constant replacement would be bad when it seems good. If everyone after a bunch of painless replacement is living lives that are so good that every moment is as good as horrific torture is bad, the idea that the iterated replacement is bad seems implausible -- but the intuition is in the mind of the beholder.