One response might be that if there are unintended negative consequences, we can address those later or separately. Sometimes it will be the case that optimizing for some positive effect optimizes a negative effect, but usually these won’t correspond. So, the most cost-effective ways to save lives won’t be the ways that maximize the negative effects of population growth—those same negative effects will be cheaper to obtain through something other than population growth -, and we can probably find more cost-effective ways to offset those effects. I wrote a post about hedging like this.
One response might be that if there are unintended negative consequences, we can address those later or separately. Sometimes it will be the case that optimizing for some positive effect optimizes a negative effect, but usually these won’t correspond. So, the most cost-effective ways to save lives won’t be the ways that maximize the negative effects of population growth—those same negative effects will be cheaper to obtain through something other than population growth -, and we can probably find more cost-effective ways to offset those effects. I wrote a post about hedging like this.
Interesting, thanks for sharing that post. I will have to read it more carefully to fully digest it!