Almost everyone holds conflicting intuitions about population ethics. This asks for a dozen or so judgements and then works out which of your answers are jointly unsatisfiable. If your views are consistent, then it tells you which unpalatable conclusions you're forced to accept.
Built on Parfit's mere addition argument (Reasons and Persons, ch. 19) and his non-identity problem (ch. 16); Broome's argument that neutrality admits no range (Weighing Lives, ch. 10) and his collapsing principle against incomparability and greediness objection to neutrality (ch. 12); and Sen's properties α and β. Format is heavily inspired by Philosophy Experiments, especially the Philosophical Health Test. For a complete list of references, see https://mdickens.me/2026/08/31/population_ethics_quiz/#about-the-quiz.
Code and initial prose were generated by Claude Opus 4.8 and 5; I [Michael Dickens] made significant rewrites for writing quality and logical correctness. Any mistakes are my own.
How to read the diagrams. Each block is a group of people. Its height is how well their lives go; its width is how many of them there are.
positive — a life worth living
zero — neither good nor bad for the person
negative — a life not worth living
A wider block represents a bigger population.