Thanks for writing this! To my eye, the "shuffling around" thought experiment that moves individuals' valuable prizes across risky outcomes is closely related to the Ex Ante Pareto type assumptions in a Harsanyi framework. Harsanyi assumed expectation-taking and used Ex Ante Pareto to get additively separable generalized utilitarianism.
Thanks for writing this! To my eye, the "shuffling around" thought experiment that moves individuals' valuable prizes across risky outcomes is closely related to the Ex Ante Pareto type assumptions in a Harsanyi framework. Harsanyi assumed expectation-taking and used Ex Ante Pareto to get additively separable generalized utilitarianism.
Of course, an egalitarian would object to Ex Ante Pareto and say that the fact that shuffling around is just as good for an individual doesn't mean it's socially just as good. So would, Johan and I show in a forthcoming JESP paper (https://johanegustafsson.net/papers/ex-post-average-utilitarianism-can-be-worse-for-all-affected-even-if-no-contingently-existing-person-is-affected.pdf) average utilitarianism or other non-separable approaches to population ethics. And so would, Stephane and I discuss here (https://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/en/publications-hal/foundations-of-utilitarianism-under-risk-and-variable-population/) somebody who wanted to be risk averse over the size of the population. Speaking for myself, I find the various weakened versions of the "shuffling around" Ex Ante Pareto axiom pretty compelling (like stochastic dominance for people sure to exist), and then it's a very short path to expected generalized totalism. If nothing else, we're learning that somebody who wants to reject expected generalized totalism has to reject some pretty weak versions of the shuffling around probability intuition.
Thanks for writing this! To my eye, the "shuffling around" thought experiment that moves individuals' valuable prizes across risky outcomes is closely related to the Ex Ante Pareto type assumptions in a Harsanyi framework. Harsanyi assumed expectation-taking and used Ex Ante Pareto to get additively separable generalized utilitarianism.
But, as you're suggesting here, we can also get versions of expectation-taking as a result! Johan Gustafsson, Stephane Zuber, and I have a paper about that (we're very close to having a better version to post online, but here's what's online for now: https://johanegustafsson.net/papers/utilitarianism-is-implied-by-social-and-individual-dominance.pdf ).
Of course, an egalitarian would object to Ex Ante Pareto and say that the fact that shuffling around is just as good for an individual doesn't mean it's socially just as good. So would, Johan and I show in a forthcoming JESP paper (https://johanegustafsson.net/papers/ex-post-average-utilitarianism-can-be-worse-for-all-affected-even-if-no-contingently-existing-person-is-affected.pdf) average utilitarianism or other non-separable approaches to population ethics. And so would, Stephane and I discuss here (https://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/en/publications-hal/foundations-of-utilitarianism-under-risk-and-variable-population/) somebody who wanted to be risk averse over the size of the population. Speaking for myself, I find the various weakened versions of the "shuffling around" Ex Ante Pareto axiom pretty compelling (like stochastic dominance for people sure to exist), and then it's a very short path to expected generalized totalism. If nothing else, we're learning that somebody who wants to reject expected generalized totalism has to reject some pretty weak versions of the shuffling around probability intuition.