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The non-identity problem | Derek Parfit | EAGxOxford 2016

EA Talks

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Why We Shouldn't Save Ourself From an Hour of Pain

We are not aware of the harm that our acts will later cause, but we may be together imposing great burdens and killing many people. What we're doing can't make the outcome worse or be wrong, because those acts will be worse for no one. If anything, future people will be benefited by having been caused to exist. The harmless torturers could claim that am to illustrate this argument. I'll just end with another artificially simple imagined case. To save ourselves from one hour of pain, each of us could either do what would cause one other person to have one whole day of pain,. Or act in a second way which would cause each of a million to have one millionth of a

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